Your post is one eyed to be sure.
What you clearly failed to notice was her being perennially weak.
I think it rather curious that you think there was no flaw in her character, and that these complaints highlight some sort of misogyny. A feminist should be pissed off at them making her as weak as she was.
She was weak. And there was never a time when she was allowed to be strong.
Her demands and resistance to the process that she volunteered to be a part of (in ignorance) were pathetic, half-hearted, and girlish. The spooks didn't take her seriously, and merely humored her where it was required. The reason they did entertain her minor fits was because they needed her presence, and as a patsy. They never needed her skills. Her skills were never proven to be of any consequence, she never contributed to what they were trying to accomplish.
Did you notice this?
Her friend, that was not invited, had studied law, but had some sort of combat experience, was similarly weak, and dear I say it girlish, and similarly utterly ineffectual. He was a black chauffeur, and she insignificant eye candy, from the perspective of the CIA, and the executive that ordered the operation.
Contrasted with all the other characters: the assassin, her lover turned would-be assassin, the spooks, the criminals, the mercenaries... she was weak, fragile and vulnerable, and she possessed no power not easily taken from her.
When she stood up for herself, or resisted, she was subjected to masculine power until she submitted.
This is of course part of the narrative.
But what made this a flaw was the film shallowly tried to establish her legitimacy (as a woman operating in a masculine world) early on with her avoiding being killed by the guard at the kill-house, and killing him turn (in the process discovering the corpses).
Count how many people are killed, how many cops are there. What are the odds of her being the one to shoot them. Irrelevant. The point was simply to establish her not being average, or (if we consider the rest of the film) useless.
I for one would have felt a more convincing woman in her role, forced to reevaluate her place in the society she had felt herself a part of, would have made a more interesting narrative. If this were the narrative, Emily blunt, and the director, didn't pull it off.
Compare her character to the female operative in Haywire...
reply
share
gantz8596
8 years ago
I think that Kate was supposed to represent our own naive view on wars on drugs, and in that sense it work very nice. But I do like her character, her stubbornness and naivety together.
Although she never had a win since joining the task force, I do believe she got herself a little victory at the end. The act of signing that document under duress at the end almost break her completely (in a sense of her beliefs and principals) but when she pointed that gun at him angrily and ready to fire, she brought it down instead like a *beep* you, I'm not like you guys"
reply
share
Smokey_T
8 years ago
I didn't read it like that at all.
She was angry, but he was her only friend through that whole story. He had taken the assignment to get her to sign the document or assassinate her because he wanted to protect her. He might have even convinced them not to just kill her before getting her to sign.
He trusted her not to shoot him, or at least judged her not to be inclined to based on the relationship (he presumed) they had.
reply
share
gantz8596
8 years ago
They need her signature, so I don't think they ever have any intention to kill her. He probably was sent because he know her, so he could try to plead to her, and also because he's a very "persuasive" person. We can see that she was afraid for her life, but most than anything it was obvious that she was frustrated because she already know that she's going to sign it.
And I'd like to think that after he got his revenge, Alejandro just doesn't care anymore, she could kill him there and it won't matter that much for him.
reply
share
Smokey_T
8 years ago
You can forge a signature... do you think the CIA would be incapable of forging one woman's signature?
Of course signing that crap, and then killing yourself would be suspicious as hell. So I have an issue with that idea. They would more effectively threaten her family. He says "don't stand on a balcony for a while". With the document signed it would make more sense to assassinate her some time after the fact. It prevents her from recanting, and looks legit because her death comes days after signing the document.
If he didn't care about dying he wouldn't have been about to kill her.
He saw his daughter in her, and if he didn't care about her killing him he wouldn't have agreed to the mission, which possibly required killing her. Did you not think his threat of killing her was a genuine one? He read and understood, her character, from the start. This is why he wasn't afraid to let her point a gun at him. This was all over for both of them.
Anyway enough of this useless navel-gazing, there are much more interesting dialogues to be had.
reply
share