Kate Review
Fighting Talk
By Mark
Sometimes, you wait forever for an action movie and then three come along at once! Should you be waiting for a female lead action movie you would usually be waiting even longer, and then three come along at once!
First out of the blocks, from Amazon Prime, was Jolt, which we reviewed here, which starred Kate Beckinsale in the title role and we have seen Beckinsale in action roles previously, the Underworld series for starters.
Quick to jump on this bandwagon were, of course, Netflix, who recently countered with their own female lead actioner in the form of Kate, which we’ll get to in just a moment, and hot on the heels of both of these will see Sky (or Netflix, depending on your location) release Gunpowder Milkshake, they evidently did not receive the single title memo, another female lead action movie.
Jolt, we liked, it was good fun and well performed. It knew it wasn’t Shakespeare and it didn’t attempt to be, it just got on with being good fun and kicking ass.
Kate then, had some reasonably big footsteps to follow in. Writer Umair Aleem (“Extraction”) had the pen and Cedric Nicolas-Troyan (“Carrot Vs Ninja (Short)”, “The Huntsman: Winter’s War”) had the camera.
In front of the camera, playing the titular Kate, is Mary Elizabeth Winstead (“ Birds of Prey”, “Gemini Man”), alongside Woody Harrelson (“ Zombieland: Double Tap”, “ The Highwaymen “).
Kate is an assassin, picked up from a young age by V (Harrelson), and taught to kill. We don’t get much of a backstory but what we see is told in gory, bloody flashback.
Kate is sent to a job by V but is horrified to find a young girl at the scene. She asks to abort, but the voice in her ear tells her to continue, take the shot, which she does, splattering the young girl with the blood of her now deceased father.
In retaliation for this, Kate is poisoned with Polonium and in her final hours decides to take revenge on those that have poisoned her, as you’d expect. This leads her to a now older young girl Ani, Miku Patricia Martineau (“Finny the Shark (TV)”).
The pair end up having to combine forces, Ani has a price on her head by those within her uncles clan whilst Kate seems to be up against everyone. But all is not as it seems and perhaps Kate’s revenge is misplaced.
Kate is well directed, Nicolas-Troyan pulls off some great tricks with the camera and keeps the action firmly on screen, allowing us to see what’s going on (thank you!).
The issue with Kate is that it is a tad predictable and there’s the usual cliches you see in action movies of certain characters just being that much better at fighting, suddenly, whilst others seem to withstand whatever is thrown at them.
The attempt to use Ani as the comedy, light-relief doesn’t always pay-off and Harrelson is woefully underused, but otherwise it isn’t a bad action movie.
Originally published at https://www.ocmoviereviews.com.
