Most big Korean action movies are retroloaded and end up with three to five endings, but Byun Sung-hyun's Kill Boksoon, which premiered as a Berlinale special, has everything going on in front of it. So much so that it initially seems like too much, to the point that it sometimes feels like there's actually a miniseries about to come out. Surprisingly, that's not such a crazy idea, since, once you get past the harebrained premise, there's plenty of rich character work to complement the violence magnificently. choreographed. that we have come to expect of the region.
The title may sound like an order, like Get Carter or (more likely) Kill Bill, but it's actually the nickname given to Gil Boksoon (Jeon Do-yeon), a well-to-do single mother who poses as a career planner. events, but he is actually the most feared assassin in the MK books.
Director: Sung-hyun Byun
Writer: Sung-hyun Byun
Stars: Jeon Do-yeon, Hwang Jung-min, Fahim Fazli
We know because we're in too deep: the opening sequence pits Boksoon against a notorious Japanese yakuza: he's wielding an ancient samurai sword; she has a hammer from Walmart. It's a stunning piece that sets the character up perfectly; Boksoon is cool, commanding, and has the ability, a la Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes, to work several steps ahead of his opponents, a visual trick used sparingly but often very effectively. His mantra is "Find the weakness." And if you can't find one? He invents one, a battle strategy inherited from his mentor in MK.
When she's not killing people, usually in the form of staged suicides, Gil lives with her teenage daughter, Jae-Young (Kim Si-A), whose growing hostility masks a heartbreaking unrequited love for his schoolmate. she. “Killing people is simple compared to raising a child,” says Boksoon, but even so, she wants to terminate her contract and settle down.
Which is a shame, because there's a lot of fun in the workplace. MK is led by the brilliant and mysterious Cha Min-kyu (Sul Kyung-gu) and his conniving sister Cha Min-hee (Esom), and their troubled relationship threatens to topple the empire when it is discovered that someone is going rogue and is carrying out 'independent' hits in direct defiance of their penal code of honour. And there are plenty of colorful suspects in the frame: many covet Boksoon's prestige and reputation, and it's a measure of his status that the interns at MK respectfully enact his most inventive kills, introducing a clever meta level to the film with the concept of Murder as performance art. Boksoon takes it all in stride, but he's not getting any younger, and a whole new generation is hot on his heels with determination. Things come to a head when Boksoon refuses to finish a very sensitive and important mission, an act of subservience that doesn't sit well with HQ.
Tarantino-esque is a phrase that isn't thrown around much these days, but director Byun taps into the story's everyday comedic element, in a style reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs or Tarantino's original script for Natural Born Killers. More strongly though, he appears to be directly inspired by Vivica A. Fox's character in Kill Bill vol. 1: The retired killer tracked to the suburbs by The Bride. Fortunately, Byun has done more than just steal the idea, creating a character one would like to see a lot more of. This, of course, has a lot to do with its protagonist, a tough but emotionally vulnerable killing machine (as his startling backstory reveals) who keeps this train on its tracks and confidently kicks ass out of every bad day the office has.
Watch Kill Boksoon 2023 Movie Trailer
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