Martineau is charming, but there’s not that much of Ani outside of her relationship with Kate. As it turns out, Renji’s plan for ascension includes wiping out all of Kijima’s family, and Kate is too soft-hearted to let Ani just die. Though we first meet Ani as the daughter of the man we see Kate assassinating at the beginning of the movie, she ends up becoming Kate’s sidekick. ![]() The character of Ani (Miku Martineau), Kijima’s niece, appears to be similarly calculated to serve as a remedy. Why Mormons Reacted So Strongly to the Alleged Racist Incident at BYU The Casual LOTR Fan’s Guide to Rings of Power’s “Adar” How We Should Remember Bruce Willis’ Career While the revenge thriller seems to want to be seen as a female John Wick, making it only the latest in a recent spate of neon-hued movies about female contract killers (the trailer touts that it’s from “a producer of” Atomic Blonde, and it arrives less than a couple of months after Gunpowder Milkshake), this bloody tourist trip through Japan is ultimately more like one of Kate’s fellow Netflix originals, the controversial and culturally insensitive Jared Leto yakuza flick The Outsider. Still, the apparent self-awareness is too little, too late, and doesn’t redeem what is fundamentally a xenophobic trope. ![]() ![]() In fairness, if the premise seems depressingly familiar (not to mention ill-timed after an eruption of anti-Asian violence), the filmmakers-director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan and writer Umair Aleem-appear to be aware of this: They supply Kate with a biracial sidekick, and a major twist late in the movie attempts to turn the formula on its head. At a glance, the movie, which sends Winstead’s titular assassin rampaging through Tokyo, seems like yet another film wherein a white American protagonist mows down nameless character after nameless character in a foreign country. When the trailer for Kate, a new Netflix film starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Woody Harrelson, was first released last month, some viewers expressed concern.
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