Kate

Summary:

Kate is a trained assassin, and her current mark is Kentaro. Kate is a master at her craft; however, she only has one rule: no kids. During this assignment, a little girl appears alongside Kentaro and Kate is forced to take the shot. 10 months later, Kate’s newest assignment is to kill the head boss of a yakusa clan. Before she is able to make the kill, the poison slipped into her system prevents her from hitting her target. With only 24 hours left to live, Kate does all that she can to take revenge.  

Characters:

Kate is an assassin who has been killing in Japan since she was young. She has been carefully trained and mentored by her handler Varrick who she has a close bond. After a job where she kills someone in front of their child, she decides that she no longer wants to be an assassin. Ani is the daughter of a former crime boss and she first meets Kate when Kate kidnaps her to use her as a bargaining tool. Ani is a teenage girl who is angry at the world and is nearly killed by her own family so she doesn’t know who to trust.

Austin: 8.2/10

Review:

Kate does a lot of things really well, and it’s a pretty solid movie. Tokyo is such an incredible city, so any movie set there gets some brownie points in my mind. It’s visually appealing all the way through, and the camera work is really good. The way this movie revolves around a contract killer sets up a lot of violence, and the writers didn’t shy away from that even once. Kate gets really violent and gory, but it really benefits our characters.

Kate is shaped a lot by her action, instead of written backstory. The way she handles different situations builds that character arc for pretty much the entire movie. I liked that we really didn’t know everything about her until the very end. It kept her character 3-dimensional, instead of setting up a  great character that remains static. It also meant we could focus more on the plot at hand, instead of watching our characters grow. The mystery kept me entertained and focused on the long list of unimportant side-characters/victims.

This list of victims was where I got confused the first time. I struggled to keep all of the characters that entered and then quickly left the movie organized, and it made the plot slightly harder to follow. There are also a couple moments where I’m sure people should have died, but they just kind of shook it off. Could there be some context to that that went over my head, sure, but regardless it just felt a little bit messy. Outside of that I thought the high-pace ticking clock was beyond exciting and a lot of fun to watch. The killing spree just added to the high-octane tone, and it really came together  in the end.

Kate is a pretty unique movie, with a decently deep story that unravels itself as we go. Nothing is ever fully clear, whether it’s the plot or the characters, and that will keep you hooked to your screen. The gore is pretty intense and in your face, but if violence doesn’t bother you this is a blast of a movie.

Favourite Moment (Spoilers):

My favourite scene has to be the moment where Kate goes on a massive killing spree. It’s an awesome action scene and although it’s pretty darn gory, it is super entertaining and a lot of fun to watch. It also shows how good of a fighter Kate is.

Nathanyal: 8.0/10

Review:

Kate was a very interesting movie to watch. Seeing the rating of R still didn’t prepare me for the chaos that I was about to watch. For those who can’t handle blood and gore, this is not the movie for you. I repeat. This is not the movie for you. Now, let’s get into it.

As usual, for the negatives of Kate, I think the biggest one is the lack of a stronger storyline or characters. The majority of this movie is spent running and gunning, literally. There were a lot of action scenes and so much blood and gore in all of them. If you were looking for a movie with strong themes or great characters, this isn’t it. For the amount of running and gunning, there weren’t many instances where the characters could develop. Near the beginning, there were many named characters that appeared before they were removed. That was one area that confused me. The plot was also simple, however, for the type of movie this is, it isn’t all that surprising.

Now, on the positive side, Kate has a lot of action and high paced fight scenes. If you’re an action junkie who loves seeing people getting shot and killed in the most brutal of ways, then this is the movie for you. Although there was a good amount of gore, I did appreciate that the blood spatters resembled what would happen in real life. There wasn’t any gore that was over exaggerated. As for Kate as a protagonist, I loved seeing her cut down droves of enemies. Her prowess in those group fight scenes as well as the creativity in the one v. ones were very cool to see. But besides some great action, that’s all this movie has to offer. There is some nice commentary on themes of family, however, there wasn’t really delved into enough. Overall, Kate was a surprisingly gory movie. For those into action and gore, then this is the movie for you. The whole plot can be summarized into killing, killing, and more killing. So, if that’s your cup of tea, you’ll enjoy it. But for those who have a weak stomach, I would stay away. 

Favourite Moment (Spoilers):

My favourite moment in Kate was watching Kijima defeat Renji in a one-on-one duel. Watching Kijima swiftly and efficiently killing his enemy was entertaining to watch and Renji’s decapitated head rolling around was the icing on the cake for the end of a corrupted character.

Sebastian: 7.8/10

Review:

Kate is exactly the film I thought I was going to get from the synopsis that I read and well sometimes that can be great I found this time around that the film was not as good as I hoped. To start with the best aspect, I thought that the action was awesome. There are many fight scenes sprinkled in throughout and each one is unique with each one has vastly different settings and the fights all went down quite differently. I liked the ticking clock element added to the story as it gave the whole thing a sense of intensity and dread because we don’t know how long until Kate dies from the poison. The story being set in Japan was also a good addition as it gives it something that makes it immediately stand out as not being in North America and so a different culture that western audiences don’t necessarily know. The acting is also quite good with Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Kate being excellent at demonstrating a stoic fighter whose been doing this for a long time while also showing her genuine fear and pain as she is dying. Miku Martineau as Ani is a really good partner for Kate as she has a tragic story similar to Kate’s but she has this upbeat and don’t care personality that gives her a good dynamic with Kate. Woody Harrelson is great as always though he is in it less than I thought. So on paper, this sounds like a great revenge film with a new element which sounds great but my problem is I didn’t care for the characters. 

Like I said they were well acted but I don’t think the script and the film give you enough information and depth to care about the characters. Kate is in constant peril and is dying from poison but I still didn’t feel invested in her character and therefore I didn’t feel engaged as much as I should be. Ani is the only character I kind of cared for and that’s partly because she was a kid so I automatically was rooting for her to survive. 

All in all, this is a solid action flick with tons of spectacular fight scenes and some intense moments that I would like a lot more if I cared a lot more for these characters. If you’re looking for one of those action films where one person kills a bunch of people for revenge then this is right up your alley and I would say check it out.

Favourite Moment (Spoilers):

I liked the sword fight between Kijima and Renji because it was build up as this big fight where Renji had the upper hand because he’s a young man and Kijima is old but I like seeing how quickly Kijima dismantled Renji.