Kitty the Killer (2023) Review
Kitty the Killer is the latest schoolgirl assassin film to make its way to the US. The difference is, unlike Baby Assassins and its sequel, indeed most films in the genre, it isn’t from Japan. Instead, it’s from Thailand, a country that’s given us plenty of great action films, including Chocolate, which featured a different kind of young female fighting machine. How does this new entry stack up?
Dina (Ploypailin Thangprapaporn, The Debut, Game Changer) is a Thai schoolgirl. She also has a second, secret identity working as an assassin for The Agency under the direction of Keng (Somchai Kemglad, Keep Running. Zombie Soldier!, Demon Warriors). Also known as The Grey Fox. But after one of their assignments threatens to set off a war between The Agency and its Japanese counterpart, Keng is marked for death.
The Agency Manager, Makin (Vithaya Pansringarm, Motel Acacia, The Prey) can’t call it off, but he can tell Dina, who rushes off to try and save him, bringing her into conflict with their most feared killer, Nina “The Faceless” (Ying Donnaporn Sukprasert).
Director Lee Thongkham (The Last One, The Maid), working from a script he co-wrote with Sorawi Alapach, Venus Saksiri and Teerat Vanavongtanateand, he seems to be setting up a fairly conventional revenge film. Instead, he veers off and takes Kitty the Killer into some rather unexpected, and mostly unneeded, comedy.
Charlie (Denkhun Ngamnet, Come Dance with Me My Love, The Wedding Contract) is a clueless account manager at an insurance company. He still lives with his mother and loses what little composure he has trying to talk to a female co-worker. All that is about to change when he crosses paths with the not quite dead Keng who tells him he has to rescue Dina, or he’ll have his family killed.
There have been entire films made around that idea of some nebbish being tossed into the man of action role, some of which have been quite good. Unfortunately, Charlie’s bumbling through Assassin 101 as he’s trained to become the new Grey Fox is at best mildly amusing and at worst downright annoying. The seemingly endless training montage quickly becomes repetitive and could easily have been trimmed.
Actually, the film could use a good deal of streamlining, as it has a tendency to get lost in extraneous matters, rather than serve up the action viewers are tuning in for. When it does deliver them, they’re well staged thanks to stunt coordinator Sumret Mueangputt (Ong Bak 2, No Escape) and his team. There’s also a fair amount of blood, both practical and digital shed, if you watch closely there’s even a decapitation during one fight. If the rest of Kitty the Killer matched the last half hour, it would have been an excellent film. Instead, much like the director’s kaiju film The Lake, it frequently gets bogged down in unneeded drama.
The film barely gets past Charlie’s training when it bogs down in a long flashback concerning another of the assassins, Tina (Sutina Laoamnuaichai, Mafia The Series: Guns and Freaks, Boxing Sangkran) which really adds little to the plot. I was more interested in the story behind the eight-year-old assassin Mina (Pleng Keetapat Pongruea, Go Away, Mr. Tumor, Blood Brothers). The group’s fourth member, Rina (Aomkaham Natchanok Kamonrattanaban) has so little to do she might as well not have been in the film.
In the end, Kitty the Killer has enough well staged fight scenes that it’s worth checking out if you like the underage assassin genre, or Asian action films in general. But it’s also a film that could have been a lot better. If the sequel hinted at by the post credits scene happens, hopefully it will be more focused on kicking ass than this one was.
Epic Pictures released Kitty the Killer in select theatres over the weekend, and It’s now available on Digital and VOD Platforms.
