Movie Review: Kate- The Dying Assassin You Don’t Mind Dying
As I watched Kate, I kept on thinking of Beckett, which I liked but had its quirks. Yet, I connected the two off of a really good problem Netflix is beginning to have….. we expect the best from them. They have been so innovative in streaming that when I heard they were giving their own “Atomic Blonde” take to femme fatales, I was in. After all, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as Huntress, was amazing, and while she embraces Kate with pure tenacious bad-assery, for all that you want to care about a woman dying before you, the gregarious action sequences and her consuming bitterness distract from whether you want her to survive.
Like I mentioned, Netflix has a really good problem; it is the best streamer, but Kate is not the best action film I have ever seen. In fact, it is a simple watch that neither makes you invest but does not make you run for the hills crying, “My Eyes! My Eyes!” In that is the “good problem,” you neither watch or look away, which is a strange reaction considering the film is about a woman dying of radiation poisoning trying to settle old, killer scores and bonding with a young girl, Miku Patricia Martineau’s Ani. The latter gives the film some level of breathe, gentility, and expands that most of Kate’s anger stems from the fact that she wanted to leave the “assassin life” and was until somebody killed her.
Admittedly, I do not think I would be friendly if someone poisoned me and I found out I had one day to live, but I can assure you I would not go around brutally killing half of Japan. Honestly, I think I would have Netflixed and chilled until my time was done. Maybe, order too much food and a body massage. Yet, NOT KATE, she is going on a murderous spree that gets big, gory, and even insane, but because there is a disconnect between heart and the screened harshness, it is not always easy to feel pity for Kate. Unlike Atomic Blonde or even Killing Eve, where beneath the cracks of violence are signs of virtue and desires for love and rest, the film yo-yos its narrative to give you glimpses of Kate’s inner workings. Yet, they are interrupted by mass action sequences that feel like someone splashed Carrie’s pig blood on a neon Party sign: bloody scary and bold colored.
Woody Harrelson delivers as Kate’s childhood mentor, and forms a saving grace in further building the lead as a full human being and not just a killer of them. Aesthetics abound, Kate gives viewers everything we know and seek in action tropes, which might be why it feels more amalgamated than original. Again, feelings you get because you are watching Netflix: the new home for original blockbusters such as, A Marriage Story and even Kissing Booth. From them, you expect a “go big or go home.” Kate ….does both; she’s big in your home, and you might not be so comfortable by it.
