Review | Berlin 2023: Kill Boksoon movie review – Jeon Do-yeon plays assassin in Korean action thriller straight out of the John Wick playbook
- Jeon is rock solid as an assassin who hides her ruthless profession from her teenaged daughter and who decides to retire, causing her employers to turn on her
- There are shades of Keanu Reeves’ character John Wick in her character and in the betrayals and bloodbaths she endures. There’s not a lot of emotion, though
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3/5 stars
The story of a female assassin who hides her professional life from her school-age daughter, Kill Boksoon is a Korean action film with more than a splash of John Wick about it.
Set around MK Ent., a covert organisation with strict rules (such as not murdering children), the film offers a series of betrayals and bloodbaths that will feel all too familiar to anyone who has seen Keanu Reeves’ killer in action.
Still, Kill Boksoon is written and directed by Byun Sung-hyun (The Beat Goes On, The Merciless), and there’s a visceral quality to the fight scenes and a rock-solid performance at its core from Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine, The Housemaid), who plays the one and only Gil Boksoon.
Premiering out of competition at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, Byun’s movie will surely find a late-night audience thirsty for high-octane kills.
She made her first kill at 17, the same moment she met Cha (Sul Kyung-gu), who runs the MK with his sister (Esom). Since then she’s worked her way up MK to become the most feared assassin in a world where “killing has become a global business”.
Boksoon is shorn of the ego of her male counterparts, and in the very opening scene we see her take down a Japanese yakuza gangster on Seoul’s Dongho Bridge using her wits as well as brawn.
Aside from this feminist slant, the element that separates Kill Boksoon from the John Wick films is her relationship with her daughter, Jae-young (Kim Si-a), who is your typical stroppy teen.
She has her own issues, not least preferring girls as partners – something that leads her to commit an act of violence at school that has her mother worrying. Is her daughter a killer too? Does she know anything of her mother’s double life?
When Boksoon decides to retire, it eventually leads to the MK team coming after her. Cue an incredible fight in a restaurant that combines agility, athleticism and black humour.
It’s the film’s outstanding sequence, although throughout Byun has a real eye for an image – a puddle reflecting a decapitated head, snow falling outside a single window as a fight ensues.
What is unfortunate, aside from the film’s protracted 137-minute running time, is the lack of genuine emotion in the film.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be expected from an action film, especially one with an astronomical body count and a derivative feel. But the core mother-daughter relationship never quite feels as heartfelt as it should. Their exchanges will just have you longing for the next combat scene.
Kill Boksoon will start streaming on Netflix on March 31.
