Netflix’s ‘Kate’ is another entry into the newly reinvigorated hitman action genre. After John Wick made waves back in 2014 and was critically and commercially adored, Netflix has actually made numerous attempts to capitalise on it. What comes to mind first and foremost is Polar, released back in 2019. To say it wasn’t loved would be an understatement, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. No, we’re here to talk about their latest attempt at the genre, Kate, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Plot-wise, Kate isn’t exactly complex. After an assassination attempt gone wrong, Kate is poisoned. She has 24 hours left before she drops down dead, and her intention is to kill the person that poisoned her. However, along the way she befriends a young girl that happens to be related to one of her targets, thus creating an interesting dynamic in which Kate is presented as the bad guy (unbeknownst to the girl she has befriended). As I said, it’s not exactly complex but it really doesn’t need to be. All it needs to do is service the action and allow us to go from set-piece to set-piece, and it accomplishes this just fine.
There’s a core cast of three actors throughout Kate. You’ve got Mary Elizabeth Winstead playing the titular hitman, Woody Harrelson starring as her handler Varrick, and Miku Martineau starring as Ani, the daughter of one of Kate’s past victims. Mary Elizabeth Winstead & Miku Martineau bounce off each other pretty well throughout the film, with their chemistry actually feeling rather natural. On her own, Winstead is a great actress, but she works better when she has something to bounce off of, especially in cases like this where she’s very much playing a deadly serious character.
Martineau here plays a young girl that’s not as serious as Kate and is enthralled by the world in which the character of Kate exists. It’s a deadly, grimy, and unclean world, and it fascinates Ani to the extent that she thinks she wants to be a part of it, and Martineau catches that childlike wanderlust well. The final lead, Harrelson, isn’t in it as much as the other two but he’s as good an actor as ever, there’s a reason he’s won multiple awards in his tenure as an actor. Playing Kate’s handler, he feels somewhat untrustworthy throughout the film (intentional, of course) and you never quite feel at ease whenever he’s in the scene, and that’s all thanks to the skills brought to the role by Woody Harrelson.
Kate acts as if we already know this character. This isn’t automatically a bad thing as it can lead to some interesting and unique storytelling opportunities, but in Kate’s case it makes characters feel intrinsically underdeveloped and almost as if they are mid-arc. This is the biggest obstacle facing Kate, in that while films such as John Wick manage to still set up their characters and their world while making sure we understand this world isn’t something new, Kate flounders and struggles to do much beyond flashy fight scenes. Still, the fight scenes are probably what you’re here for and they’re pretty damn good. Director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan seems to understand how to construct and stage good action, and the film is brutal throughout. It’s gory and hard-hitting, sometimes getting close to perhaps being overly gratuitously violent, but never quite crossing that line. The final twenty or so minutes especially is incredible, filled with action-packed set pieces and guns galore. It’s a shame the rest of the film never quite hits the high of this section, honestly.
At the end of the day, Kate could be a lot better. The plot is muddled and the characters can feel underdeveloped at times thanks to the writing. But the action is good enough to keep the attention of the viewer and to make it a worthwhile viewing experience. You’re not exactly going to find a new perspective on life watching this or the next John Wick, but you’ll probably have a lot of fun regardless.
If you’re interested in our perspective on other Netflix exclusives, why not check out our take on why Netflix made Lucifer better than ever before?
Review Disclosure Statement: Access to Kate was provided to us by Netflix for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.
Summary
Fun but not incredible, Netflix’s Kate is a passable action movie that doesn’t last too long and knows when to end. You’ll likely enjoy the movie, but not a lot of it will actually stick in your mind in the hours and days after your initial viewing.
