Kate

Kate is a 2021 American action thriller film directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan and written by Umair Aleem. The film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Miku Martineau, Woody Harrelson, Tadanobu Asano, Michiel Huisman, Miyavi, and Jun Kunimura. The film follows Kate (Winstead), an assassin, whose mentor and handler (Harrelson) assigns her to kill a high-ranking yakuza boss. During Kate's final mission, she finds out that she has been poisoned and has at most a day to live, so she uses her last hours to get revenge and find out who set her up.
==Plot==
Kate is an assassin and expert sniper who eliminates targets chosen by her trusted mentor and handler, Varrick. After she was left orphaned as a child, Varrick raised her as a father figure, giving her extensive training in weapons and combat and eventually inducting her into his private team of wetwork specialists.
Kate is in Osaka to kill an officer of a powerful yakuza syndicate, but Kate resists taking the shot because a child has unexpectedly accompanied him. She ultimately shoots the target at Varrick's insistence. While Kate's assignment is a success, this breach of her personal code to not kill in the presence of children leaves her in emotional turmoil. She tells Varrick that she will do one final mission, and then retire so she can start a new life.
Before the final mission, Kate meets a charismatic stranger, Stephen, at her hotel's bar. The pair share a bottle of wine and have sex in her room. Later, while preparing her sniper's nest, she starts getting symptoms of dizziness that cause her to miss the shot. Kate realizes that Stephen poisoned her, and after crashing a car, wakes up in a hospital to learn that she has acute radiation poisoning caused by Polonium-204 and only a day to live. She steals injectable stimulant drugs and a gun and sets out to exact revenge on whoever poisoned her.
Kate tracks down Stephen and his girlfriend and learns that they were strong-armed into poisoning her by Sato, a yakuza affiliated with the Kijima crime family. Kate finds Sato at a luxury restaurant and kills him along with dozens of armed yakuza. Desperate for information about the reclusive, well-guarded boss Kijima, who she thinks might be behind the poisoning, she kidnaps Ani, Kijima's niece. Kate realizes that Ani is the girl who saw her father die during the Osaka mission.
Kate uses Ani as bait to lure Kijima out into the open but decides to become her protector when she learns that Ani's family wants to kill her as part of an internal power struggle, led by Kijima's corrupt advisor, Renji. Kate uncovers more clues about the Osaka mission and realizes that her trust in Varrick may be misplaced. She tracks down Kijima, who reveals 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.
Meanwhile, Ani learns of Kate's involvement in her father's death from Varrick, causing her to shoot Kate in the face when trying to reason with her, and leaves with Varrick. Kijima, aware that Kate is close to death, joins her with a small army of his men to assault Renji's headquarters.
After a fierce gunfight, most of Renji and Varrick's men are killed, and Kijima personally beheads Renji for his betrayal. Kate locates Varrick, who is holding Ani at gunpoint. The two have a fast draw and Varrick is fatally shot in the stomach. Ani then helps Kate walk outside to the roof, where Kate sheds a single tear as she succumbs to her poisoning.
==Cast==
* Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Kate, an assassin
* Woody Harrelson as Varrick, Kate's mentor and handler
* Miku Martineau as Ani, the niece of top Japanese crime boss Kijima
* Tadanobu Asano as Renji, a yakuza to Kijima
* Jun Kunimura as Kijima, an aging yakuza boss and Ani's uncle
* Michiel Huisman as Stephen, who poisons Kate
* Miyavi as Jojima, a flamboyant yakuza who lives with Renji
In addition to providing two songs to the soundtrack, the musical group Band-Maid appear as themselves, performing one of those songs in the club where Kate finds Ani.
Category:2020s films
Category:2020s American films
Category:2020s English-language films
Category:2021 films
Category:2021 American films
Category:2021 in film
Category:2021 action films
Category:American action thriller films
Category:Netflix original films