Kill Boksoon: Jeon Do-yeon plays assassin in visceral Korean thriller

Boksoon is so adept that she instantly joins the league of other memorable female killers, such as Uma Thurman’s The Bride in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill and Kim Ok-vin in The Villainess.

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.

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