Why You Liked ... Kate

Imagine being dropped into a world of danger with only your principles. Kate brings her code of ethics to a gunfight.

Kate – The Action Heroine Hollywood Forgot We Needed

There’s something to be said for an action film that doesn’t just throw a random actress into a catsuit and hope for the best. Kate, Netflix’s neon-soaked revenge thriller, does something rare. Kate gives us a female assassin who actually looks like she knows what she’s doing. Mary Elizabeth Winstead isn’t here to pose dramatically in leather and execute impractical spinning kicks. She fights like someone who’s… well, let’s have a look.

[Montages are in the video]

Winstead knows her way around a gun because she’s made a career out of playing characters who shoot first and ask questions never. I first encountered her in 10 Cloverfield Lane, but where I remembered her S-tier murder skills was playing the Huntress in Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.

Winstead plays the titular Kate, a hardened killer who finds herself in a spot of bother. Some wanker’s given her a lethal dose of radiation, and unlike in the MCU, this does not give her superpowers. It gives her rapidly liquifying internal organs. With mere hours left to live, she embarks on an outstanding rampage through Tokyo to uncover the bastard responsible. It’s like John Wick, if Wick had a terminal diagnosis instead of a dead dog, and had to take the Yak to the mat while he bled out through his eyeballs. The result is a brutally entertaining action romp that somehow manages to have a bit of heart beneath all the gunfire and astronomically high funeral expenses.

No Side Characters

One of the film’s standout elements is its supporting cast. Woody Harrelson, always a reliable presence, plays Varrick. He’s Kate’s handler and mentor, the sort of character who you instantly suspect has a few too many skeletons in his closet. Despite the bone collection, he’s raised Kate from a tender age to be a murder hobo. Speaking of tender ages, we also get Miku Martineau as Ani. She’s like Batman’s Robin, if Robin were addicted to MDMA and loved to party. Kate never asked for a sidekick, but because she’s got those damn ethics, she begrudgingly takes Ani under her wing. This is probably not the win condition Ani was hoping for, because being under Kate’s wing is also being in the eye of a bullet hurricane. Their dynamic is sharp, funny, and becomes unexpectedly touching. It’s one of those pairings that could have easily been annoying, but instead gives the film a surprising emotional core.

Kate has every reason to go full lone wolf assassin. She’s poisoned, pissed off, and running out of time. The last thing she needs is a chatty teenager in tow. But she keeps Ani close, not because she needs a sidekick or an emotional support delinquent, but because she recognises something familiar: a kid desperate to belong, but just… latching onto the wrong people. And despite being a one-woman demolition crew in a leather jacket with a higher body count than the entire Expendables series, Kate still gives a damn. She’s the Yakuza’s worst nightmare: a high-functioning psycho with principles. And those principles won’t let her leave Ani to fend for herself, even if Kate’s personal countdown is almost at zero.

Brutal Legend

Kate sets itself apart by featuring an action heroine who actually looks like she could win a fight. Hollywood has a nasty habit of casting action heroines who hit like a gentle breeze on a warm summer’s day. Case in point: Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, who moved with all the menace of a soufflé. Winstead, on the other hand, fights like she’s got unpaid bills and her enemies are money piñatas.

It’s like a singalong, except violent: there are moves so savage I winced as if I were the one getting thrown through a table. There’s no effortless, gravity-defying elegance here. The punches, kicks, and takedowns feel like they cost those money piñatas every last cent. Kate’s sheer willpower holds her together as her body steadily gives up on her. And as Kate gets sicker, the fights get nastier. It’s like watching someone try to finish a marathon while being actively set on fire. It’s grim, it’s brutal, and it’s absolutely brilliant.

Winstead reminds me of Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell or Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde. These actors spent months in the gym and the shooting range before they got in front of the camera, and it brings a believability to each encounter that can’t be delivered by an actress who’s never lifted something heavier than 10 kilograms.

Who is Kate, Really?

For all her skill with a gun, Kate’s real defining trait isn’t just her ability to kill. Alright, fine, it’s mostly her ability to kill, but the other part is that she refuses to be the mindless murder factory she was trained to be. And when I say “trained,” I mean, “indoctrinated from childhood by Varrick, a man whose idea of parenting was probably a PowerPoint titled Guns Have Feelings Too.” Kate was moulded to obey, shaped into the perfect assassin, and could have easily gone out exactly how she was made: as a ruthless, detached killer with the emotional range of a T100.

Instead, she radicalises survival, choosing to reject what the world expects of her. As her time runs out, she doesn’t just survive; she decides who she is, and even perhaps who she was meant to be. And that’s why, despite the carnage, Kate isn’t just a film about making murder vogue again. It’s about friendship, duty, honour, identity, heroism, and sacrifice. It’s about rejecting the roles forced upon us and deciding, once and for all, who we want to be.

And it doesn’t shy away from a decision-making process that involves a whole lot of bullets.

The Struggle is Real

That struggle is key because Kate isn’t just about stylishly murdering people in neon-lit alleyways. Well, it is, but it’s also about mortality, regret, and the footprints you leave behind when you’re gone. Kate’s relationship with Ani starts as a hostage situation and somehow evolves into something almost… parental. A toxic, gunfire-laced mentorship, sure, but a mentorship nonetheless. Even as she ploughs through enemies with the efficiency of a woodchipper, you can feel the film nudging toward something deeper. This is a blood-soaked meditation on legacy.

Kate has spent her whole life being a weapon wielded by others, passed from a trauma-filled childhood to a morally questionable handler like an ancient curse that keeps finding new victims but never gets broken. But with the clock running down on her final hours, she makes one last, defiant choice: to wield herself. She isn’t just hunting down the twat who poisoned her; that’s table stakes. Kate’s taking control of her own ending. She refuses to go out as another name on a collateral damage schedule. Kate writes her name into history in someone else’s blood.

And in doing so, Kate gives Ani something she never had: a real role model. No, not someone who can hold a gun, but someone who holds a fucking line. Because Kate’s time is up. There’s no sequel at the end of the rainbow, no post-credits tease promising a miraculous recovery. What she can do is go out as the person she always should have been: the version of herself that not even Varrick’s relentless brainwashing could erase. The version that, despite all the death and destruction, still has something worth teaching.

Ani’s spent her life looking for a reason to believe in something, or maybe, anything. Ani’s version of Japan is brutally short on heroes, but she finds one in Kate. Sure, at first, Ani just thinks Kate is a badass babe with a body count, but by the end, she understands what heroism actually is: sacrifice. And sacrifice, as it turns out, isn’t just an act. It’s a philosophy. A creed. A code. One that Ani might just decide to live by.

Inverse Racism

Part of Ani’s struggle is that she’s half-Japanese, half not. And it’s the ‘not’ half that makes her life difficult. Her ‘family’ constantly reminds her that she’s a living record of her father’s gaijin-tryst mistake. She’s stuck in an identity limbo, viewed as too foreign by some, not foreign enough by others. It’s the kind of cultural exclusion that doesn’t require overt hostility, just a lifetime of subtle reminders that you’re an outsider in your own home. And as much as Ani resents it, she’s internalised that mindset herself. It’s why, when she first meets Kate, she immediately looks down on her as the ‘other.’ But Ani’s sharp tongue and teenage bravado are a fossil record of familial rejection running right to the molten core. The same alienation she’s spent her life trying to ignore is weaponised against Kate.

Kate, of course, is the ultimate outsider. She’s not just a gaijin. She’s a professional gaijin, paid to be invisible until she isn’t. She’s a foreign assassin operating in a culture that prizes subtlety, hierarchy, and knowing your place. She lives a rules-optional lifestyle and doesn’t care about making herself palatable to the people around her. It makes her dangerous, but it also makes her alone. She moves through Japan like a ghost, acknowledged only by the funerals and shattered families in her wake.

The film embraces the stranger in a strange land trope, but in a way that goes beyond surface-level storytelling. This isn’t just a backdrop for stylish violence; it’s a meditation on belonging, or the lack of it. Kate and Ani are two sides of the same coin, both craving something they’ve never truly had: a place where they fit.

Ani has spent her life being told she doesn’t belong. Kate has spent hers proving that she doesn’t need to. She’s forged her own path, but beneath all that hardened assassin efficiency, Kate wants to belong. She wants a family, and in Ani, she sees an echo of what that might look like. Ani’s a girl still looking for a reason to believe in something bigger than herself, and Kate’s the one to give it to her.

By the end of the film, Ani doesn’t just admire Kate’s skills. Ani wants what Kate represents. Not just power, not just survival, but the kind of unwavering certainty that Kate carries with her even as she dies. Because Kate, for all her flaws and blood-soaked choices, is justice. She’s the first real, tangible proof Ani has ever seen that someone can live by a code and die with dignity. And that’s something worth holding onto.

So, What?

So, should you watch Kate? Absolutely.

If you like your action heroines competent rather than decorative, it’s a must-watch. If you appreciate action sequences where you reflexively curl over the on-screen injuries as if they’re your own, you need to see it. And if you want to see Woody Harrelson being his best shifty self, then this is a film for you.

It may not have John Wick’s unrelenting brand cachet, but what it does have is a protagonist who feels painfully, brilliantly human. It’s a solid reminder that action stars who actually train for their roles deliver performances that outlast the run time.

Kate isn’t just another stylish assassin film. It’s a stylish assassin film where the killer decides they won’t be defined by their past. It’s about choosing to do something good, even when you know it won’t save you. Kate doesn’t fight for survival; she fights for meaning. And that’s what makes her one of the most human action protagonists we’ve had in years.

So, what did you think of Kate? Let me know in the comments, unless you disagree with me, in which case leave those comments on someone else’s post. Enjoyed this rampage through neon-lit carnage? Support me on Ko-fi! Every coffee helps me stay awake long enough to write more questionable metaphors about action films: