Review Detail

As an original film, Netflix's Kate falls into the usual Western action movie traps of relying on making fun of foreign names/culture and letting its story get a bit heavy-handed with exposition and fight scenes. It is a solid film, but gives its own game away too soon in an effort to make the viewer care for the protagonist.

Huntress: Dead On Arrival manages to fix the flaws of the original film while seamlessly integrating Bird of Prey flashbacks to make this a very special entry in the gone-too-soon DCEU. The story and its mystery flows better, the fight scenes are more brutal and a bit more "comic book-y" in their speed and focus, and the relationship between Huntress and Ani is allowed to both breathe and build to its heartbreaking conclusion. I appreciate the "show don't tell" philosophy on display with Boom Boom Yellow--film is a visual medium and we don't need to use the soda to take cheap shots at Japanese culture for levity.

I will echo jasonflippy's notes about the leftover dishonored killer line and the boardroom-captive-boardroom movement and just add that the subtitle track had a slight inconsistency: sometimes it would translate the spoken Japanese, leading to white subtitle text appearing over the burnt-in blue subtitles. It only happened a few times (the server speaking at the restaurant before the second and third fight scenes, when Ani first enters the hotel claiming to have gotten away, and one or two lines in Kijima's confrontation with Huntress).

Varrick's death/final confrontation with Huntress felt a little too quick (he says a shot to the stomach will make you die slow, then immediately dies), but given the dialogue trims and the original scene anyway, I don't know that much can be done about that. All in all, an excellent release and one I intend to revisit frequently.