John Wick had an assassin take out a Russian mafia.” White-on-white crime is fine! Who cares? In Peppermint, you had a white suburban American mom steamrolling Mexicans in their turf. Taken had a former CIA op go to an entirely different country to take down sex traffickers. To reiterate my own words from my review of 2018’s Peppermint, “I do think that race and a lead character’s occupation play an intricate part in your enjoyment of an action thriller. Somebody saw that one scene of Hawkeye murdering the Yakuza in Endgame and decided to make an R-rated version of it. This leads her to Ani (Miku Martineau), a vulgar and precarious teenage girl whose father she murdered on a mission many years ago. With only 24 hours to live, she goes on a one-woman warpath to exact vengeance on the Yakuza, who she believes are the culprits behind her inevitable death. While operating in Japan for several years, specifically killing crime bosses of the Yakuza –– because Hollywood just loves to have them as the basis of every Japan-based action flick –– a mission goes awry and she discovers that she’s been poisoned. In this film, you have Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as an assassin who, much like many others of her type, has been trained since childhood and mentored by an old white dude (Woody Harrelson) who acts as their father figure and commanding operative, played by a way-too-good actor who deserves better.
#KATE NETFLIX MIKU MARTINEAU MOVIE#
Congrats, Peppermint (that movie with Jennifer Garner mowing down Latinos), someone made a revenge action movie with even worse optics than yours! That being said, this is the most uncomfortable femme fatale assassin movie I’ve ever sat through. I’ll give props to cinematographer Lyle Vincent (who has often worked with Cory Finley and Ana Lily Amirpour), whose shots and camera movements combine the city’s natural pop and color with the dark and violent rampage the titular lead is on. It’s not that this movie makes the city look pretty, it’s the city that makes this movie look pretty. I’m not complimenting the filmmaker though because it's clear that he uses the city to gain style points so it can look different from the onslaught of femme fatale flicks we’ve gotten this year, like Gunpowder Milkshake and The Protégé. Hell, my editor Myan already booked a trip there and I might be next. It makes you want to book a trip to Japan. Cedric Nicolas-Troyan takes advantage of neon-filled scenery to make the film look glitzy. If there’s anything that works in Kate’s favor, it’s the fact that it was shot in location in Tokyo, Japan.
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