Huntress: Dead On Arrival

This was a very tight and impressive clean-up of "Kate," and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The original was fun the first time but it lacked emotion, there were some strange choices, and it dragged just a little too long. This time through I swear I almost cried when she drank that damn soda. Good for her.

The one visual editing instance was at 1:06:26 where Kijima's subtitle says "...are a dishonored killer." but he doesn't say anything before that. It seems to cut in halfway through a sentence of his.

The one narrative issue for me was at the end when Ani goes from sitting at the board room table to being held prisoner, and she also goes from so mad at Kate that she shoots her to being really excited that Kate is coming to save her. I think cutting right from 1:08:47 to 1:09:13 will make it seem like Varrick and Ani have just been in the board room the whole time and also keep Ani's emotional responses consistent.

Other than that, this is a really really great cut. I enjoyed this so much more than the original. Excellent work!

Checking the runtime for Kate, I noticed that twenty minutes had been cut from the edit. I was concerned that might cause problems, but as I sat through the thing, I was never happier to be proven wrong. Huntress: Dead on Arrival is a revelation, a creative work that delivers a tight, solid noir thriller starring a great lead performance and insanely cool action. It's such an arresting experience, you never notice how the main character isn't called by her name. You never need to be reminded, the character has enough parallels to Huntress in Birds of Prey that she speaks for herself, which this edit brings more to the front by seamlessly integrating that movie's flashbacks into the appropriate contexts, adding depth to the story by proxy. The edit is so well executed that.anybody who loved Birds of Prey, or even just loved Huntress in that movie, will get a kick out of this. It is definitely a gritty movie, which feels appropriate for her character.

(Based on the cut list, I kind of wish the editor kept the Boom Boom Lemon gag, that sounds like a cute bit of levity in that moment, and the pay off would have been utterly hilarious.)

This was a deeply welcome surprise. I had never heart of the Netflix movie "Kate" (2021) so, WakeupKeo's idea of lightly filing away her given name, switching in Birds of Prey footage seamlessly with the flashbacks to her past REALLY did make this feel authentic. Likewise, it was watching Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who just goes from strength to strength) apply all that training and physicality she employed as Huntress in what feels like a continuity of character. The only reason I've left one star off enjoyment is because this is such a sad tale, soaked in regret that time has run out. It's a 10 for engagement, but the subtraction for "enjoyment" signifies a bitter-sweetness, which is frankly, to me, BETTER. It means that like Leon (which this felt rather like) it will stay with me. Meanwhile my wife also wasn't aware of the movie's existence and only worked out it was a fanedit about halfway through, when she realised there were no references to anything DC-related outside the flashbacks. Now THAT takes some skill and subtlety. Bravo!

This is a really nice piece of work, not only in terms of the creativity of the idea but also the execution. The Kate and Huntress characters line up so well. The BOP Huntress scenes have been integrated perfectly and it felt like this is exactly how the movie was always intended to be. The extra effort made to include a nod to the SPYRAL agency is also appreciated. Highly recommend you don't sleep on this and let this surprise addition to the DCEU slip under the radar.

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.