KILLER WITH WARMTH
Ahitwoman is most at risk at that moment when she contemplates a career change. Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is the latest in a long line of super assassins to make this rather basic mistake.
But she does so with more than enough conviction to hold her audience’s attention.
An extremely tight deadline helps her to keep her focus.
That and her body’s physiological response to the poison that courses through her veins.
Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan (The Huntsman: Winter’s War), this bloody revenge thriller, set against a neon-lit Tokyo backdrop, gets the job done with minimum fuss and maximum efficiency.
Winstead adds an unexpected note of warmth to what is a pretty straightforward genre flick.
Woody Harrelson’s minder/mentor Varrick counterbalances her performance with a sublayer of restrained menace. The film opens with a well-orchestrated hit on a Japanese yakuza, or mobster.
Kate is momentarily thrown by the surprise appearance of her target’s teenage daughter. After confirming her kill order, the consummate professional finishes the job.
But Kate has one rule: no children. In the months that follow, she is haunted by the bloodsprayed face of the traumatised 17-year-old. After her next job, Kate tells Varrick, she’s out. But on the eve of her final assignment, someone slips her a lethal dose of radiation.
It throws her off her game and she botches the hit. Waking up in hospital, Kate discovers she has just 24 hours to live.
At that point, a well-adjusted person might well stop to smell the roses.
But Kate, who was “adopted” by Varrick as a young orphan, is a killing machine.
Death is all she knows. She intends to devote what little time she has left to exacting vengeance.
That’s how she once again crosses paths with her deceased target’s daughter. Kate initially sees Ani (Miku Martineau) as a means to an end – flushing out her gangster father’s colleagues.
But the precocious, mouthy, damaged teenager slowly worms her way into Kate’s affections.
Somewhere in between the knifings, the impalements and the decapitations, a bond begins to form, one that is based on shared experience.
It’s easier to turn a blind eye to the Netflix film’s calculated approach to bums-on-couches, because it leaves absolutely no room for a sequel.
And that’s exactly as it should be.
Now streaming on Netflix