![]() Winstead, however, chooses to play Kate as a human being - not some femmebot executioner dressed in latex or pigtails. Often, a female actor in these grindhouse actioners adopts a stoic dreariness meant to pass for a gives-as-good-as-she-gets empowerment, as if anything so fanciful as a personality is a sign of weakness. The script by Umair Aleem is little more than a framework for the only two elements that matter: the fight choreography - quite good, courtesy of “John Wick’s” Jonathan Eusebio - and the wavelength of the star, which has come to mean everything. It’s a strong opening for a breed of action spectacle where audiences can map out the twists like they’ve been handed a Thomas Guide. But she pulls the trigger anyway and watches in slow-motion horror as the man’s blood spatters the girl’s face and coat, a carnation pink that recalls the moment Jackie O. She pulls up to an assignment in a dessert van - an unnecessarily cutesy touch - and finds she’s expected to snipe her target in front of his daughter, Ani. Kate is introduced on the most traumatic day of her job. There is only carnage - and to his credit, Nicolas-Troyan (“The Huntsman: Winter’s War”) keeps the hits coming. ![]() Other symptoms of this gimmick include blistered skin, pounding eardrums, wobbly knees and an urgency to take an entire gangster clan along with her to the grave. But Kate’s Terminator resemblance also includes her left eye’s red and distended pupil, evidence of the polonium poisoning that will kill her in 24 hours. Yes, she can rack up quite the Schwarzenegger-esque kill count. Kate, the titular antihero of director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s vicious vengeance flick, is a grown-up child assassin trained by her mentor (Woody Harrelson) in the art of death, a fate so common among on-screen orphans that their support group could fill a church basement. “You’re a Terminator,” Tokyo teen Ani (Miku Patricia Martineau) gapes to Kate ( Mary Elizabeth Winstead) after witnessing the bloodshed her kidnapper has brought down on two dozen yakuza now lying shot, stabbed, sizzled on a yakitori grill and very, very dead.
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