and the Dennis Quaid remake from 1988, also called D.O.A.Īfter gathering some stimulants, she's on her mission. If this sounds familiar, it was also the premise of the 1950 Edmond O'Brien picture D.O.A. She distills her anger and focuses it on one task: She will find out who is responsible and take revenge. One poorly green-screened car chase later, she ends up in the hospital and learns she's been given a fatal dose of Polonium. But before she can complete the deed, she's feeling ill. It's someone she recognizes as part of the crew she ambushed in Osaka. She picks up some dude in a bar for a night of passion but is called away for another hit job. Some months later Kate has relocated to Tokyo. Her handler/mentor ( Woody Harrelson) tries to remind her that that this is business they've chosen, but she truly seems spooked. Maybe it's time to hang up her high-powered rifle and, I dunno, take up fly fishing. Kate does as she's told, but it leaves her upset. Unheard voices in her earpiece tell her to take her shot, even if her mark's young, adorably dressed little girl is standing right there. We first meet Kate (the star of Kate) on a sniper mission in Osaka. You gotta respect the frugality, I guess. There's almost no exploration of the character's backstory or inner beliefs, I guess because they figure other movies already handled it. This strikingly rote and meaningless picture stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as an elite assassin who, we'll learn through flashbacks, underwent years of training to become an unstoppable killing machine, much like this summer's Gunpowder Milkshake, Black Widow, and, to a lesser extent, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. But it's been a long time since something has felt so generated by the 0s and 1s of TrendyScriptBot3000. It’s rated R.Kate, a movie you will never be able to read about on the internet by searching for its title alone, has a credited screenwriter. Still, in terms of any sort of inspiration or originality, “Kate,” the movie, is every bit as D.O.A. Look, we get it, people are looking for new stuff to watch, mindless escapism included. Netflix’s emphasis on providing original movies has of late included a steady diet of forgettable thrillers with high-profile leads, including “Sweet Girl” and “Beckett,” starring Jason Momoa and John David Washington, respectively. The movie thus becomes one long bout of violence for its own sake, with the inevitability of Kate’s fate only further detracting from any suspense about where the story is heading. Still, there’s not much mystery in the “why” of it all, and nary a beat that doesn’t feel almost wholly predictable. Kate absorbs an enormous amount of punishment and dishes out far more, using guns, knives, fists and when pressed common kitchen appliances. Under the stewardship of French director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan (“The Huntsman: Winter’s War”), a movie like this ultimately boils down to the quality of the action, and it’s both plentiful and particularly bloody. There’s a pinch of “The Professional” and more recently Netflix’s considerably better “Gunpowder Milkshake” in their killer-kid bonding, which doesn’t have much time to develop with so much damage to be done before Kate’s condition becomes unmanageable. Kate’s search for those behind her demise brings her into contact with a teenage girl (newcomer Miku Martineau) who is the granddaughter of a mob boss, and as written proves annoying even by the standards of teenagers in these kind of movies. She delivers the bad news to the boss who raised her, played by Woody Harrelson, who can play this sort of appealing hitman in his sleep. In similar fashion, Kate – a Tokyo-based killer for hire – ingests a slow-acting poison, giving her a day to track down who was responsible, slashing and shooting her way through much of Japan. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the movie’s eponymous female assassin, in a mash-up loaded with old-movie ammunition that still comes away firing blanks.Īside from Winstead’s recent role as Huntress in the “Harley Quinn” movie, the most obvious point of reference would be “D.O.A.,” the 1950 film noir starring Edmond O’Brien (subsequently remade with Dennis Quaid) in which a fatally poisoned man spends his remaining hours trying to unravel the mystery of who killed him. Someone must be watching Netflix’s parade of mindless thrillers like “Kate” (never mind why), but even allowing for that, it’s hard to imagine a more bare-boned plot as excuses for stylized violence go.
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