@cswood said:

Was fully expecting this to be another Gunpowder Milshake/Jolt and the first few minutes seemed to confirm my suspicions, but it actually wasn't that bad. Reminded me a lot of Crank or D.O.A. with a little Leon/Nikita thrown in but set in Japan and with a lady. I think the fact MEW looks progressively awful as the movie goes on was crucial, the ladies in these movies almost never even break a nail let alone look like borderline zombies from taking damage.

A good time, no alcohol required.

You're right, it was decent - much better than Ava with Jessica Chastain.

Although I was going to say the opposite about MEW; she was dying but there were lots of moments where she came out looking refreshed and/ glowing. Even after...a shot in the head? Wasn't quite sure when the girl shot her.

Also it was blatantly obvious Woody was the bad guy - they could've at surprised us by having him remain loyal or something!

@cpheonix said:

Also it was blatantly obvious Woody was the bad guy - they could've at surprised us by having him remain loyal or something!

Yes that was easily the dumbest part of the movie for me. I didn't love it obviously, but it was okay especially compared to other movies of its type. I did see The Protégé and that was a lot better than this movie mostly because of Samuel L Jackson's "I'm getting paid so F it" attitude and Michael Keaton being Michael Keaton.

@acontributor said:

I skipped this movie but since you liked it maybe I'll give it a try

If I had to choose I'd say go with The Protégé over this one, but this one was okay.

Liked it as well. The story is banal and obvious, very predictable, but it's decent viewing and not boring like the other movies mentioned here. The Japanese angle was refreshing and I liked all these anime references and tributes.

Besides, this movie has one of the most beautiful shots I saw in a movie in recent years. That tracking shot when she goes to the roof with a sniper rifle was absolutely gorgeous, well done.

@acontributor said:

I still haven't seen The Protégé but I saw Kate and I didn't think it was much better than Gunpowder Milkshake. In fact it was basically the same plot: Female Assassin kills men for a living. She kills little girl's dad then becomes responsible for little girl. Little girl also becomes a killer.

But this one wasn't nearly as outrageous as Gunpowder Milkshake was. You had Nebula and Cersei both taking on hoards of dudes hand-to-hand as well as the three librarian women also doing more or less the same, at least here it was mostly MEW taking on guys roughly her size and taking damage that looked like it hurt.

Again, not saying it's Kill Bill tier or anything close to that, just simply better than most other "lady John Wick" knockoffs. I mean if you saw Ava or Jolt those were the bottom of the barrel for me.

@acontributor said:

I'm not saying I don't like any assassin movies. Leon The Professional was good because it was about a pathetic man who kills people for a living and then his life is changed when he meets Mathilda. I didn't like that he teaches her how to kill though. And he also has a rule about not killing women as if men are expendable. That is pretty messed up. I also don't like Natalie Portman. So it's not one of my favorites or anything.

Bourne Identity was also good

Speaking of Leon I watched La Femme Nikita at a pretty young age and that was pretty much my introduction to "lady assassin" movies. I do agree that many of the modern ones have a very blatant anti-male slant which might be another reason why I liked The Protégé more because there was a nice father/daughter dynamic .

My main complaint about a lot of lady action movies is that the women don't take punishment the way a Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson did back in the day. Even Arnold would get hurt in his movies, so when a female action character actually gets the crap beaten out of her it usually makes for a more believable movie (one of the reasons I gave Jolie credit in Salt despite the movie being so-so) .

Mentioning here two more watchable movies from the Female assassin/killer genre - Atomic Blonde and Anna. While Atomic Blonde has really stupid story, the action scenes were done extremely well. And Anna has surprisingly clever writing, I mean relatively to its genre. I enjoyed both, as Kate. Others mentioned here are bad examples, I watched Protégé few days after Kate and it was pretty bad. I don't understand how such movie can get such high caliber actors. The Rhythm Section was absolutely forgettable. There is another one that maybe can be mentioned too - Peppermint with Jennifer Garner, also not good.

I checked here before watching it and based on the initial banter in this thread, I decided to give it a go. Fun pop-corn flick, female badass and invincibility trope, but with that said entertaining and watchable. Good pacing. The only thing that bugged me was the fun but silly CGI car chase and the all-magazines-fit-in-all-guns silliness. 6/10 for me.

It was ok I guess.

It's a film that pretty much has to get by on it's action. And a few years ago I probably would have been quite impressed with those set pieces. But we've had quite a trend recently for this kind of elaborately choreographed ultra violence with the likes of John Wick, Extraction and Nobody that Kate's choreography doesn't seem quite so elaborate and it's violence not quite so ultra. As such I found myself not really feeling much excitement during these set pieces here. While for some reason, I can't quite put my finger on it, but I just can't buy Winstead as an action star. I think she's generally a good actress but she just seemed wrong here. Even with all the roughed up make up I found her to look a bit of an odd contrast, unnatural. Like she looked clean cut and roughed up at the same time.

And are cars such fantastical and mythical creatures that they need to be CGI?

But yeah, despite my party pooping there are definitely much worse films of this sort out there.

@cswood said:

Was fully expecting this to be another Gunpowder Milshake/Jolt and the first few minutes seemed to confirm my suspicions, but it actually wasn't that bad. Reminded me a lot of Crank or D.O.A. with a little Leon/Nikita thrown in but set in Japan and with a lady. I think the fact MEW looks progressively awful as the movie goes on was crucial, the ladies in these movies almost never even break a nail let alone look like borderline zombies from taking damage.

A good time, no alcohol required.

No, it was absolutely terrible. She finds the couple responsible for poisoning her then instead of killing them she asks if they have lemon juice? Garbage movie.

@Adammm said:

No, it was absolutely terrible. She finds the couple responsible for poisoning her then instead of killing them she asks if they have lemon juice? Garbage movie.

It's been a while since I've seen this, but the couple that poisoned her were hired, correct? How is she supposed to find out why she was poisoned or who hired them if she kills them right away?

@cswood said:

@Adammm said:

No, it was absolutely terrible. She finds the couple responsible for poisoning her then instead of killing them she asks if they have lemon juice? Garbage movie.

It's been a while since I've seen this, but the couple that poisoned her were hired, correct? How is she supposed to find out why she was poisoned or who hired them if she kills them right away?

Uh... kill them after getting the information she wanted. Terrible movie.

@Adammm said:

Uh... kill them after getting the information she wanted. Terrible movie.

Sure, but, and I stress I haven't seen this in two years, I remember the husband was being coerced into doing it and the wife had nothing to do with it. He was told to poison her and didn't know her or have any other reason to do it other than he and his wife would be killed/harmed had they not done it. Kate not killing them speaks to her character, that she's not just a cold blooded killer. Personally I'm okay with that, but I can see why others might not be.

@cswood said:

@Adammm said:

Uh... kill them after getting the information she wanted. Terrible movie.

Sure, but, and I stress I haven't seen this in two years, I remember the husband was being coerced into doing it and the wife had nothing to do with it. He was told to poison her and didn't know her or have any other reason to do it other than he and his wife would be killed/harmed had they not done it. Kate not killing them speaks to her character, that she's not just a cold blooded killer. Personally I'm okay with that, but I can see why others might not be.

A cold blooded killer kills someone for no reason not killing someone who has already killed you which the couple did to her. You don't have to stress anything it was just an opinion on an awful Netflix movie not needing your input.

@Adammm said:

A cold blooded killer kills someone for no reason not killing someone who has already killed you which the couple did to her. You don't have to stress anything it was just an opinion on an awful Netflix movie not needing your input.

But that's like killing the mailman who delivered the envelope filled with anthrax powder who also had a gun to his head had he not delivered it. Sure, I can see why a killer might see that guy as fair game, but as I said, I think it makes the character more complex to recognize that the person was just dealt the wrong hand.

I may have to rewatch this movie again now just to make sure I'm remembering correctly.