“Death Is the Time for The Beginnings.” – Kijima

The Netflix action-thriller film is written by Umair Aleem and directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan. It was released on September 10, 2021 and unfortunately received mixed reviews from the critics.

About the movie:

Movie follows a female assassin named Kate in Tokyo, Japan, who targets people chosen by her handler, mentor Varrick, whom she has a very trustworthy relationship with. Kate was chosen and raised by Varrick after her parents died.

Now a grown-up, after a drunken encounter with a stranger, right before her final mission, our assassin realizes that she got poisoned with a substance that no one has an antidote for. She finds out that she has a day to live and with her last hours on earth she decides to go seek revenge on whoever organized to get her poisoned.

During her mission Kate kidnaps and gets to know another character in the movie – Ani, the daughter of one of Kate’s previous victims. With many twists and turns in the story line, our assassin’s fate remains unknown until the end of the movie.

Characters and actors:

• Kate – Mary Elizabeth Winstead, also known for her role as Ramona Flowers on “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”.
• Varrick – Woody Harrelson, who has previously starred in films such as “The Edge of Seventeen” and “Venom”.
• Ani – Miku Martineau
• Kijima – Jun Kunimura
• Renji – Tadanobu Asano
• Stephen – Michiel Huisman  

Plot – The overall plot of the movie wasn’t anything new in the film industry. It was a solid idea for another action movie which if advertised correctly would get its own audience. To get the viewers to sympathize more with our main character this film also included the aspect on how Kate’s mental state was affected by murder training and another familiar trope where the cold-blooded killer becomes nicer, sweeter around the presence of a child. And a worthy mention within this action filled story line is the parallels of the scenes – they are well thought out and make the experience of watching the film better, more pleasant. My rating – 7,8/10.

Acting – One of the weakest things about this film is that it feels like it contains more action than quality dialogue. Of course, it’s an action-thriller film, but it did start to feel as if the characters fought every 5 minutes. Overall, the acting skills weren’t that bad and we assume that the actors did try to do their best with what they were given, because this film does have a talented, solid cast. I would rate it 7,9/10.

Pacing – The pacing of the film in our opinion was actually well done at the start. The scenes didn’t feel too long or too short and the progression of events was very satisfying. But when many secrets started to get unraveled, the pacing started to feel off.  At some moments it was hard to keep the focus on what was happening. It could have been the fault of plot predictability or the lack of culmination, but in general, the pacing wasn’t too bad. We rate it an approximate 7,9/10.

Cinematography – The cinematography in this film was questionable. It felt like the whole film took place only during the night, because the camera angles, the lighting that was used on set was pretty much the same most of the time (even though the film was supposed to have at least a 24-hour long timeline, by the information we are given at the start of it). There wasn’t anything special or new about the camera movement and there weren’t too many eye-catching special effects. Neon lights were a major part of the film and one of the ways how the atmosphere was created, but even that started to feel overused the more we got into the movie. Overall, we give it a 6,5/10.

There is not anything specifically inventive within this Netflix action thriller, but it still serves as something to watch when a person has no idea or has to find a middle way between films. “Boom Boom Lemon” moment is above it all though.

Even with all of the added visuals, added twists on an overused story line and a great cast, this film still struggles to leave a lasting impact on the audience, especially in the crowded assassin movie genre. However, this film was still an interesting watch with some twists of its own. On average, we rate this film a 6,8/10.

–  Cinema detectives