Kill Boksoon (M, graphic violence, 137 mins) Now streaming on Netflix. In Korean with subtitles. Dubbed option available.
Directed by Byun Sung-hyun
‘‘Kill Bok-soon’ is a terrific K-drama about a range of attractive, sometimes even beautiful people, who kill for a living, but the way viewers are let inside the characters’ imaginations lifts the film to a level above most crime capers. Somehow we come to believe killing for a living might even make some sort of bizarre sense. It’s a fast-paced film, really well scripted, showing Korea’s underbelly and also its sophistication.
The opening sequence establishes the tone brilliantly: in a downtown Seoul railway yard, current time, a smart assassin on a mission, Gil Bok-soon (Jeon Do-yeon, famous in Korea on a Meryl Streep level), gets the better of a top Japanese swordsman. Zappy dialogue lets us in on the underworld in which Bok-soon operates, introducing the competing companies that employ assassins, who in turn compete for work with the underclass unemployed.
Bok-soon seems, at first, to be a thoroughly nasty piece of work, but all the same, she quickly gets us onside. She’s highly skilled, absolutely in control, used to success. She’s clearly too good at her job to fail, even when her weapon of choice is a humble axe purchased from a warehouse, while her opponent wields a centuries old samurai sword. She draws us in, particularly when she projects herself into possible futures, after seeing death in her victims’ eyes, and then shows her vulnerability as a mother. She has depth.
