Kate (2021)
The “killer with a heart of gold” movie genre is such a fun one. I legitimately love it, a subgenre that is actually quite wholesome, if you think about it. No one’s perfect, and let’s be real, there will always be killers out there. At least for most of these movies, those killers are generally contained within the criminal world. It’s usually when these characters have to compromise their values that the heart of gold takes over.
However, there’s also something to be said about a movie that has all of those trappings, yet tells us instead a tale of revenge, cold and simple. Kate occupies that unique niche, and it’s all the better for it.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the titular assassin. While the movie opens with a moment straight out of that subgenre we talked about, it subverts it pretty thoroughly. Kate is tasked with killing a man, but his daughter turns out to be present, violating a code that she holds. However, she’s pressed to complete her mark, and proceeds to actually do so. She kills a man right in front of his child, and then the story progresses a whole year.
After the time skip, Kate is apparently nearing the end of her career, as she talks to her handler/trainer, Varrick (played excellently by Woody Harrelson), about retirement options. On what would be her final mission, however, she ends up poisoned. It’s not just any kind of poisoning, though - it’s acute radiation poison, with her having been slipped a lethal amount of polonium-204. The doctor gives her a prognosis of only 24 hours, which sets her on a course to figure out who commissioned her poisoning and exact her revenge upon them.
Where the “killer with a heart of gold” thing really gets flipped on its head is that, to get to her target, Kate decides to use the very same girl whose father she murdered in front of her as a bargaining chip. Through their journey together, Kate softens up, but she actively avoids all of the clichés that this story usually has. She does nothing but argue with the girl, Ani, and doesn’t tell her that she killed her father. Even the life lessons that she eventually imparts on her captive are delivered with a hearty dose of venom.
While she finally begins to soften up to her hanger-on by the third act, it still takes a very defined backseat to Kate’s ultimate goal of revenge. There’s plenty of twists and turns, but the driving force behind the narrative isn’t due to a conscience. Even in the final hour, when things take a certain turn and Ani is a factor in Kate’s decision, she’s still only half of the equation. The other half is pure, unfiltered vengeance.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead is, admittedly, a favorite of mine. Ever since Live Free or Die Hard, I’ve carried a torch for her, but that wouldn’t blind me to a lack of talent if that were the case. However, that’s not a concern here; she’s the real deal, and in this movie, she sells every agonizing second of her declining health. If I were the type who looks down on action flicks, I likely would feel she’s wasted on this movie, but in reality, I think that action flicks can come in all forms of elevation, and her performance holds this film to a higher standard.
For full effect, play Girls It Ain’t Easy by MoNa while looking at this image.
Her turn as one of the newest in a long line of badass action gals is a worthy entry into those sacred halls. There’s even a point where she’s sporting what is almost a Ripley-esque haircut. She kills every second of it, and while the event that led to her poisoning might cause some people to scoff (a hookup before the job was blackmailed into doing it), it’s the exact kind of thing that would happen to her male counterparts, and I love it for that.
Many of the action sequences are fairly straightforward. I think some would count that against the movie. I just say that we’ve been spoiled by movies like John Wick, where stylish kills and ridiculous stunts are par for the course. Here, the action is pretty gritty and brutal, with not as much flair as one might expect. This serves as an interesting commentary on Kate’s character, though, and I would bet that it was kept lowkey intentionally. Kate isn’t the absolute best like John is. In fact, her forte is long-range rifle-based assassination. When it comes to a gunfight, she wouldn’t be very smooth at it, and instead would simply take the path of least resistance.
The plot is pretty standard, aside from the nice wrinkle I talked about above. That’s not a bad thing, though. Sometimes, a nice, simple bloodbath is a nice break from some of the more cerebral cinema out there, and an action flick with tons of gunfire and death is an art unto itself. That being said, the camera work here is nothing to sneeze at. The city of Tokyo provides a nice, neon-bathed backdrop for many of the movie’s greatest scenes. In fact, the final moments of the film, while I won’t spoil them, lean on that vibe to powerful effect.
While it’s not exactly reinventing the genre, I really liked Kate. It’s a fun action movie with some great cinematography, and I wouldn’t ask for the 106 minutes I spent on it back by any means. It’s okay for a movie to simply be good; if it entertained you, it was worth the time.
Now I’m off to order some Boom-Boom Lemon, just to see why Kate was so enamored with it.
