Kate (2021)
Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
A ruthless criminal operative has less than 24 hours to exact revenge on her enemies and in the process forms an unexpected bond with the daughter of one of her past victims.
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7 films that influenced Kate
What critics say influenced Kate
In addition to the dramatic echoes of Crank and the classic noir D.O.A. , Kate owes a lot stylistically to the John Wick and Kill Bill movies, referencing and in some cases outright copying elements of their sets, cinematography and costuming.
But the scattered bits that do come through are a reminder that the genre's best — Kill Bill and the original French La Femme Nikita ; the snappy 1996 Geena Davis vehicle The Long Kiss Goodnight and 2014's great, ludicrous Lucy , starring Scarlett Johansson — root their adrenalized set pieces in protagonists who actually seem to have inner lives, no matter how extreme.
When the regal Japanese star Jun Kunimura (“Kill Bill”), here playing the heavyweight boss at the center of the havoc, takes a swipe at Westerners who “gorge on cultures they don’t understand,” the line sounds more pointed than Nicolas-Troyan might have intended.
Kunimura also shines, which is terrific because he’s a great actor whose profile has grown since “Kill Bill” but is rarely given a chance to deliver a full-bodied character like he does here.
If we’d known collectively as a society that the success and appeal of the John Wick film series would have ushered in a slew of copycat assassin films, is it possible we would have said “no thanks” to the premise altogether?
Kate seems to take particular delight in stabbing an attacker 6 or 8 times in the same place all at once — it’s tough to not likewise delight in her fervor — and superb choreography from the 87North shop (formerly 87Eleven, the foundation of the John Wick s) makes it all go down smoothly.
Director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan ( The Huntsman: Winter’s War , 2016) knows the action is the key, and he’s assembled the ideal team for the job in producers David Leitch & Kelly McCormick, cinematographer Lyle Vincent, and stunt coordinator Jonathan Eusebio (fight coordinator on all three John Wick films).
So, yes: “Kate” is “John Wick” meets “Die Hard” meets “Collateral” meets “Kill Bill all the Volumes” and we’ve seen it all before and you’re not going to get much in the way of original plot, but what you WILL get is a grindhouse of a good time with some bleak and wickedly sharp humor, screen-popping visuals and some pretty great fight choreography.
The third is obviously John Wick , via a succession of neon-lit scraps that rely heavily on the use of everyday objects as weapons, with David Leitch and Kelly McCormick’s 87North Productions even involved on the producorial side of things.
Once that radiation kicks in, Winstead cranks it into John Wick -ian overdrive, and it’s boundless physical commitment and ass-kickery all the way down.
Maybe with Luc Besson's '90s girl-assassin hits "La Femme Nikita" (1990), about a teen junkie turned killer for a sinister government agency, and "Leon: The Professional" (1994), which had Natalie Portman, in her first film role, playing a 12-year-old honing her own killer instincts.
We know what the hack screenwriter used for his mashup — “D.O.A./Crank” meets “The Professional.”
A rare offering from the genre, with a woman as the main character, the film is produced by "Atomic Blonde" and "Deadpool 2" director David Leitch.
Several screws loose of making sense or caring about its titular character, Cedric Nicholas-Troyan’s predictably tepid action thriller “Kate” mimics “Lucy” and “Atomic Blonde” in a desperate bid to stoke affection.
One of the best female assassins of recent years was Lorraine Broughton, Charlize Theron's thug-whomping MI6 spy in the 2017 Cold War thriller "Atomic Blonde" — not a perfect movie, but one with an instructive connection to "Kate."
Speaking of which, it excises the style of Atomic Blonde and mythology of John Wick in favor of a more personal character study about confronting the realities of death, which gets sloppy when the movie tries to present Kate as an undeveloped adult with suspended adolescence due to her violent backstory.
But you were probably expecting that, since the trailers readily advertised that this was produced by the same people that brought us "John Wick" and "Atomic Blonde."
This is an 87North production, spawned by folks behind “John Wick” and “Atomic Blonde,” so it’s a form-over-substance exercise.
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But the scattered bits that do come through are a reminder that the genre's best — Kill Bill and the original French La Femme Nikita ; the snappy 1996 Geena Davis vehicle The Long Kiss Goodnight and 2014's great, ludicrous Lucy , starring Scarlett Johansson — root their adrenalized set pieces in protagonists who actually seem to have inner lives, no matter how extreme.
And in "Kick-Ass" (2010), the movie that cranked up the level of cartoon violence in these sorts of films to a hilarious new level, Chloe Grace Moretz teamed up with her on-screen dad, Nicolas Cage, to form a remorseless urban crime-fighting team.
Similar to Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction , Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s title hero is a highly-trained operative in a foreign land, who gets drawn into a combination of rescue mission and fight for survival, all while trying to protect a teenager.