KATE : Monday 13th September 2021.

With Greater Sydney still in COVID lockdown now until the end of September at least, and as a result all cinema's closed until sometime after this date, I've been reviewing recently some the latest feature films released onto Netflix. One such film that I watched from the comfort of my own sofa at home this week is the American action thriller 'KATE' Directed by the Frenchman Cedric Nicolas-Troyan. This is only Nicolas-Troyan's second feature film making credit following 2016's 'The Hunstsman : Winter's War' although he did perform Second Unit Director duties on 2012's 'Snow White and the Huntsman' and 2014's 'Maleficent'. Worthy of note is that David Leitch serves as Producer on this film - he who made his Directorial debut on the 2014 action film 'John Wick' with Chad Stahelski, though only Stahelski was credited. Leitch then Directed the 2017 thriller film 'Atomic Blonde', followed by 2018's 'Deadpool 2', and then in 2019, 'Hobbs & Shaw', and sure enough his influence is clearly evident in the action set pieces and the stunt work seen in this film. Released onto Netflix on 10th September, the film has garnered mixed or average Reviews.

The film opens up with an aerial shot of a pink ice cream truck making its way around the streets of Osaka, Japan. The truck pulls up in a yard full of shipping containers. Inside the back of the truck is Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Varrick (Woody Herrelson) having a final conversation about her hit on a powerful yakuza officer. It turns out that Kate is an expert assassin and sniper who eliminates targets chosen by her trusted long term mentor, handler and father figure, Varrick. After she was left orphaned as a child, Varrick took her in and raised her giving her extensive training in weapons handling and combat techniques and eventually bringing her into his private team of those with a very particular set of skills. After dispensing with a pair of yakuza goons Kate prepares herself with her rifle in a prime position overlooking the expected point of arrival of a car. The vehicle duly pulls up and the syndicate member steps out of his car and presents himself as the target, but Kate resists taking the shot initially because a child has unexpectedly accompanied him. She hesitates, seeks clarification of the kill order and then asks once more before pulling the trigger and killing the target on Varrick's insistence. 

Fast forward ten months, and we are in Tokyo. While Kate's assignment was successful, she can't shake the fact that this breach of their personal code to not kill in the presence of children leaves her emotionally scarred. She tells Varrick that she will do one final mission, and then retire so she can start a new normal life. Varrick is none too pleased at this news and says that after two visits to Walmart she'll come hurrying back, but Kate is undaunted. Before her last mission Kate is relaxing in a hotel bar alone sipping on a glass of Margaux. A guy named Stephen (Michiel Huisman) sidles up and the pair strike up a conversation, which leads them to sharing a bottle of wine which leads them into bed. Afterwards and before Stephen has left she gets a text message from Varrick saying one last dance, tonight, at 11:00pm on the roof top of some tall city building. Up on the roof top of that building while preparing herself, she starts feeling dizzy and unable to focus causing her to miss the shot. She shoots again, and then again but by which time the mark has got away. Kate soon enough comes to the realisation that Stephen must have poisoned her. She steals a souped up car and after a high speed car chase through the streets of Tokyo followed by the goons guarding her failed mark, she ultimately crashes her car end over end landing on its roof. 

She comes round in a hospital and learns from the Doctor that she has acute radiation poisoning from Polonium 204 and only twenty-four hours or so to live. She steals injectable stimulant drugs and a gun and sets out to take out her revenge on whoever poisoned her. Kate traces Stephen and his girlfriend to their apartment, and threatening them both at gunpoint learns that they were strong-armed into poisoning her by Sato, a yakuza affiliated with the Kijima crime family. 

Kate finds Sato (Koji Nishiyama) at a luxury restaurant called The Black Lizard, and kills him along with dozens of armed yakuza (in a bloodbath action set-piece straight out of 'John Wick' or 'Kill Bill'). Sato's last man standing reveals that Kijima's niece Ani (Miku Martineau) might be able to tell her where the reclusive head of the crime family might be in hiding. Upon tracking down Ani to a nightclub Kate realises that Ani is the girl who stood beside her father during the opening Osaka mission. 

Kate uses Ani to lure Kijima out into the open. Renji (Tadanobu Asano) sees himself as the natural and younger successor to the older Kijima and so sends Shinzo (Kazuya Tanabe) and a bunch of goons to Kate's designated meeting place. After another action set piece in which Kate thwarts all manner of goons she ends up shooting Shinzo who was ready to dispense with Ani following Renji's orders. After this, Kate and Ani share a quiet moment in an alleyway as Kate cough's up blood and is physically exhausted. She decides to become Ani's protector upon learning that her family want her dead as part of an internal power struggle. So how to get to Renji? Ani suggests that his boyfriend Jojima (Miyavi) might be able to lead them to him and he can be found in their shared penthouse apartment. Upon arriving Jojima is not prepared to divulge Renji's whereabouts and a fight breaks out with Jojima gaining the upper hand over Kate, but he is ultimately killed by Ani with a swift blow to the head with a very heavy object. Kate uncovers a semi automatic assault rifle with laser sight and a hand gun concealed in the fridge door and so the pair go in search of Renji, which they are able to do by tracking his whereabouts on Jojima's mobile phone. 

Renji is ambushed in his car by Kate who kills the driver and another guard but lets Renji go free when he tells her that he doesn't know where Kijima is, except that he spending 'family time'. Ani however, knows that family time means time spent in his childhood home in the hills. And so, getting in a taxi they head to the hills and Kijima's family home. Kate calls Varrick from the taxi and bids her final farewell, telling him to collect her body from the hills. 

Upon arriving Kate is on her last legs and she tells Ani to beat it. Venturing into the house, Kate finds Kijima (Jun Kunimura) alone. They talk, with Kijima resigned to his fate, but not before he tells her that Renji made a deal with Varrick to incorporate his team into the syndicate in exchange for killing Kijima and all of his blood relatives. Varrick pulls up and outside Kijima's house meets Ani sat on the curbside. He proceeds to tell her that Kate killed her father in Osaka and is responsible for the deaths of almost her entire family. A single shot rings out from inside the house, implying that Kate has shot dead Kijima. When Kate emerges, a tearful Ani confronts her, raising a gun, pulling the trigger and shooting Kate sending her reeling backwards seemingly dead. Ani gets into the car with Varrick and the pair drive off. 

Soon afterwards Kijima appears and hands Kate an injectable stimulant which she plunges into her leg giving her an hour or so respite. Kijima, aware that Kate is close to death, provides her with a small army of his men to assault Renji's headquarters, where Varrick has taken Ani. Kate. Kijima and their small army arrive and following a fierce close quarter gunfight, all of Renji and Varrick's men are killed. Kijima personally slices the top of Renji's head off with a samurai sword for his betrayal. 

Kate locates Varrick, who is holding Ani at gunpoint. The two stand guns drawn facing each other. Both shoot at the same time with Kate caught a glancing blow and Varrick is fatally shot in the stomach, slumping down in a chair to die shortly afterwards. Ani then helps Kate walk outside to the roof, where Kate, finally at peace with herself, dies in Ani's arms looked on by Kijima. 

For a film that has it's roots in the 1950 feature film 'D.O.A' and then again in 1988 under the same name, there is very little that is new here in terms of the plot, except that the location has changed from California to modern day Japan, the chase and fight sequences are way more intense, the bad guys are considerably more disposable and the language is a lot more colourful. The staged action sequences are impressive thanks to the pedigree of Nicolas-Troyan on Director duty and Leitch serving as Producer and the cast are on top form - most notably Winstead who proves her action heroine acting chops, Harrelson is always watchable and newcomer Miku Martineau in her feature film debut and in only her third screen outing is surprisingly gifted. Aside from these positives, the film is predictable in its premise, is formulaic in its approach to the now often seen fight scenes and offers up nothing new that you haven't seen countless times before. It's not a bad movie but it's also not that great either, and if you enjoy your female assassins getting stabbed, punched, kicked, shot, bruised, battered, bloodied and barfing as she rapidly deteriorates from the inside as well but still managing to ably dispense with an army of yakuza no good bad dude types, then this movie is for you. 

'Kate' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

MIDWAY : Thursday 30th January 2020.

I saw the M Rated 'MIDWAY' on its Australian opening night in a movie theatre that was somewhat surprisingly devoid of paying customers. This is a remake of the 1976 film of the same name which charts the Battle of Midway following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Directed and Co-Produced by that master of disaster Roland Emmerich whose previous screen outings take in the likes of 'Independence Day', 'Godzilla', 'The Day After Tomorrow', '10,000BC', '2012', 'White House Down', and 'Independence Day : Resurgence' most recently. The film has been a passion project of Emmerich's since the mid-'90's, but he had trouble getting the necessary financial backing for the film before finally fund raising most of the budget of US100M and officially announcing it in 2017. With that sort of budget, this film is one of the most costly independent films of all time. Released in the US in early November last year, the film has so far taken US$123M at the Box Office and has received generally mixed or average Reviews so far.

On 7th December 1941, Japanese forces launch a devastating attack on Pearl Harbour, the U.S. naval base in Hawaii, so catapulting the US into WWII. In the days immediately following the attack Admiral Chester Nimitz (Woody Harrelson) is given command of the severely fractured US Pacific Naval Fleet. He speaks with Lieutenant Colonel Edwin T. Layton (Patrick Wilson) - an intelligence officer of the US Pacific Fleet, about his failure to convince Washington of the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, but to stick to his guns when next he needs to confront Washington over a suspected enemy attack.

On 18th April 1942, Lieutenant Colonel James Dolittle (Aaron Eckhart) led an air raid on the Japanese capital of Tokyo and other places of strategic interest on Honshu Island. It was the first air strike on the Japanese archipelago, and showed that the Japanese mainland was vulnerable to an American air attack while serving as retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbour. Sixteen B-25B Mitchell medium bomber aircraft take off from the USS Aircraft Carrier 'Hornet' with fifteen aircraft reaching China but all crashed, including Dolittle's while the 16th landed at Vladivostok in the Soviet Union. As a result the Japanese turn their focus on the Coral Sea in a battle fought from 4th to 8th May 1942, between the Imperial Japanese Navy and naval and air forces from the United States and Australia.

In the meantime Commander Joseph Rochefort (Brennan Brown) the Chief Cryptologist of the US Pacific Fleet Radio Unit intercept messages with a Japanese location noted by the call sign 'AF'. Layton speaks with Nimitz, who advises him that Washington believes that 'AF' is a target in the Aleutian Islands. Layton disagrees, believing the intended target to be Midway Atoll. Nimitz instructs the team to find a way to definitively prove that 'AF' is in fact Midway. Needless to say, in time, Rochefort and Layton are able to prove that Midway is the target. In preparation for an ambush of the Japanese fleet, Nimitz orders carriers 'Hornet' and 'Enterprise' to be recalled from the Coral Sea operations and demands that the damaged 'Yorktown' be made ready for combat operations within 72 hours. Attacked by Japanese dive-bombers in the Coral Sea, the 'Yorktown' sustained damage from a bomb which penetrated the flight deck and exploded below decks, killing or seriously injuring 66 men. The bomb also damaged her superheater boilers, rendering them inoperable . . . but only for 72 hours!

On 4th June the Japanese launch an air attack against Midway. Early attempts by US land based aircraft to strike at the Japanese fleet carriers fail. After a downed B-26 narrowly misses striking a carrier's bridge, the Japanese crew are stunned, believing the aircraft was attempting a suicide run, although Admiral Chuichi Nagumo (Jun Kunimura) nervously infers that the plane was most likely out of control due to battle damage. 'Nautilus', a US submarine, successfully locates and attacks an enemy carrier but the torpedo narrowly misses its target. The destroyer 'Arashi' keeps the submarine pinned down with depth charges so the carriers can escape. Meanwhile, US carrier planes are launched in an effort to destroy the Japanese carriers. After reaching the last known location of the Japanese fleet the US forces discover that the carriers have moved. Upon sighting the 'Arashi', the Lieutenant Commander of the Air Group of the 'Enterprise', Wade McClusky (Luke Evans), correctly infers the Japanese destroyer is rushing back to join the main Japanese fleet and leads his planes to follow its course and attack.

As Nagumo's personnel switch out their aircraft ordnance for an anti-ship attack, US carrier-based planes appear suddenly. 'Enterprise' squadron Commanders McClusky and Richard Best (Ed Skrein) successfully lead their planes through the anti-aircraft fire and destroy the Japanese carriers 'Kaga' and 'Akagi', and squadrons from the 'Yorktown' destroy the 'Soryu'. Attempting to salvage the battle, 'Hiryu' commanded by Tamon Yamaguchi (Tadanobu Asano) attempts to rally the remaining Japanese aircraft for an assault against the US carriers. Locating 'Yorktown', the Japanese bomb and disable the carrier scoring three direct hits.

Upon returning to the 'Enterprise', Best learns that half of his squadron is either missing in action or destroyed. Informed that there is a surviving Japanese carrier, Best rallies what pilots he can and sets off to attack the 'Hiryu'. Japanese anti-aircraft fire fails to stop the attack, but Best in his typical no fear gung-ho do or die dive bombing raids scores a critical hit that destroys the 'Hiryu'. 

Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance (Jake Weber), informed of the destruction of the last Japanese carrier, decides to withdraw for the night rather than test his luck. Informed of the loss of his carriers in battle, Admiral Yamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa) orders his fleet to withdraw from the battle rather than risk his battleships without sufficient air cover, effectively bringing the Battle of Midway to a conclusion. Upon returning home in a wheelchair Best is reunited with his wife Anne (Mandy Moore). He informs her that he inhaled a large dose of caustic soda into his lungs instead of oxygen to aid with high altitude flying, and as a result he will never fly again. 

The closing credits reveal what became of those US wartime heroes depicted in the film, as well as the Japanese reprisals following the battle. Dennis Quaid also stars as Vice Admiral William Halsey the Commander of Carrier Division Two aboard his flagship carrier 'Enterprise'. Halsey led a series of hit-and-run raids against the Japanese, striking the Gilbert and Marshall islands in February, Wake Island in March, and carrying out the Doolittle Raid in April 1942. Halsey returned to Pearl Harbour from his last raid on 26th May 1942, in poor health due to an extremely serious bout of Shingles brought about by stressful conditions at hand, and as such missed out on the Battle for Midway, which he later described as his greatest disappointment.

In remaking 'Midway' Director Roland Emmerich here takes a valuable lesson in history that he presumably made for a whole new audience either unfamiliar with that 1976 film, or indeed the decisive battle in the Pacific, or both, and on that basis I guess the story had to be told, again! And whilst the CGI effects are commendable, and the action set pieces well executed, what we have here boils down to Uncle Sam beating his chest once again and spraying a can of whoop ass all over the cookie cutter Japanese. The cast are all largely one dimensional as is the heavily cliched dialogue, and I felt the film was bereft of any emotional weight or the chance to get really invested in the characters. There is very little by way of suspense or tension here either, and you just know that in Ed Skrein's Dick Best flying ace, that he's going to win the day and get back to his girl, shaken but not stirred! Ultimately this is a WWII drama set in the 1940's, with the look and feel of a 1970's war time epic, boxed up with all the CGI of 2020, and on that basis the film delivers, but left me feeling a little underwhelmed.

'Midway' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard out of a potential five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-