Critic Reviews

So, yes: “Kate” is “John Wick” meets “Die Hard” meets “Collateral” meets “Kill Bill all the Volumes” and we’ve seen it all before and you’re not going to get much in the way of original plot, but what you WILL get is a grindhouse of a good time with some bleak and wickedly sharp humor, screen-popping visuals and some pretty great fight choreography.

Subtle it's not: Kate is red-meat storytelling, all broad outlines and crunched bones. But there's a visual wit and visceral energy to it that other recent efforts (the pop-feminist comic-book gloss Gunpowder Milkshake, also on Netflix, and Amazon Prime's spectacularly silly Jolt, featuring a rampaging Kate Beckinsale) struggle to find.

For those just looking for bones breaking, faces getting stabbed, assassins delivering perfect headshots, Kate more than delivers. This film is a solid, fun action-thriller in a world filled with subpar ‘Wick’-ian clones.

Winstead makes you believe, however improbably, that if a woman like Kate actually existed outside a screenwriter’s imagination, she wouldn’t be far off from this portrayal: isolated, mule-headed and ready for a change.

It would be a stretch to call Kate a modern Western, but it has a certain gunslinger sensibility that mitigates any self-conscious edginess. There’s even a modicum of poignancy as Winstead fights her personal battle through increasing bodily disrepair. Despite the existence of so many movies like it, Kate tires you out on its own terms.

A to-the-point two-hour slab of pulp that slickly glides above a very low bar.

Kate has its charms.

Another unimaginative woman-led action flick written and directed by men who telegraph their twists and lean on flashbacks instead of bothering to write character development, Kate mistakes “Women can kill just as well as men!” for some sort of new idea.

It’s a shame that both Umair Aleem’s script and Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s (The Huntsman: Winter’s War) direction ultimately feel rote because both Winstead and Martineau’s performances are fun to watch. Their playful, natural chemistry keeps the film from dragging on and lends a necessary levity and wit to the movie’s 106 minutes.

Winstead may be a bonafide action hero, but the world around her just isn't interesting enough.