Kill Boksoon (2023) Review

“Kill Boksoon” Netflix Poster

Director: Byun Sung-hyun
Cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Sol Kyung-Gu, Kim Si-Ah, Esom, Koo Gyo-Hwan, Lee Yeon, Lee Jae-Wook, Park Se-Hyun, Ahn Seong-Bong, Kim Sung-Oh, Ki Joo-Bong
Running Time: 137 min.

By Paul Bramhall

At this point there are very few active actors and directors left who haven’t worked with Netflix in some form or another, and in 2023 arguably the most highly regarded actress in Korean cinema, Jeon Do-yeon, made her first appearance for the streaming giant. Clearly going for the all-in approach, she went for a double whammy by headlining the romantic drama series Crash Course in Romance to kick off the year, and with less than 4 weeks since the last episode aired domestically, at the end of March she headlines the assassin action outing Kill Boksoon (a play on her character’s name Gil Boksoon).

For those suffering from female assassin flick fatigue, a perfectly reasonable symptom considering in the last 5 years alone we’ve had Ava, Proud Mary, Kate, Gunpowder Milkshake, Red Sparrow, Maria, Black Widow, Anna, Protégé, and Baby Assassins (I’m probably missing more), then it may be best to clock out now. For everyone else, Kill Boksoon offers up Do-yeon as an elite assassin that works for what can best be described as a killer’s union. The union ranks their staff accordingly, and despite being past her prime, Do-yeon is still a grade A, a fact which causes some mild contention amongst the fellow assassins she’s closest to. 

Workplace jealousy is the least of her problems though, with her single mother preoccupied with a just come out of the closet high school age daughter, played by Kim Si-ah (Ashfall, Miss Baek), whose relationship with a girl at school leads to the expected drama. Adding to her stress levels are the fact her assassin employment contract is coming up for renewal, and needing to contend with the affections of both the unions chairman, played by Sol Kyung-gu (Idol, Yaksha: Ruthless Operations), and a fellow assassin, played by Koo Kyo-hwan (Escape from Mogadishu, Peninsula). At its heart though, Kill Boksoon relies on the same trope of practically every other assassin themed narrative out there – at some point Do-yeon refuses to go through with a hit, which puts her in the crosshairs of both her employers and her acquaintances.

In a career spanning 25 years Do-yeon’s rarely put a foot wrong when it comes to her work on the big screen, which means that when she does it makes it all the more painful (Memories of the Sword and Emergency Declaration spring immediately to mind), and unfortunately Kill Boksoon ends up a lamentable effort. The 5^th feature from director and scriptwriter Byun Sung-hyun, after solid work on the likes of 2021’s Kingmaker and 2016’s The Merciless (both of which also feature Sol Kyung-gu), here he struggles to find any meaningful narrative thrust to justify the whopping almost 140-minute runtime. 

Opening with a pre-title scene that sees Do-yeon face off against a cameoing Hwang Jung-min (Deliver Us from Evil, Veteran), their short duel contains what I’d like to think was an intentional homage to the skirt rip Cynthia Khan does in In the Line of Duty III, before we see Do-yeon’s assassin do what she does best. However the scene also acts as a microcosm that presents many of Kill Boksoon’s flaws. Do-yeon’s ability to predict how certain scenarios will play out often sees an action scene take place, only for an abrupt cut to reveal that what we were watching is just in her imagination. This technique can work well when used sparingly, perhaps the best example being Eric Jacobus’s Death Grip from 2012, however here it gradually becomes a frustration. No more so than in a ridiculous finale that sees multiple versions of herself literally fill the screen at the same time like a multiverse gone wrong. It simply feels gratuitous.

There’s also what I like to call several instances of the ‘Netflix curse’. Clearly the production has a decent budget behind it, but there’s no escaping the fact that many of the surroundings we watch the characters interact in are there via green screen (both Seoul Vibe and Jung-E fall foul of the same issue), confounded by the fact that, outside of the main cast, the world they inhabit feels strangely devoid of people. Many of the scenes consist of only a handful of characters and are usually in a confined space, making the world that Kill Boksoon takes place in feel strangely limited and lacking depth, an aspect of the production that only feels more pronounced thanks to the lengthy runtime.

The other issue comes in the form of the action direction. While both Netflix and studios in general seem to have a greater appreciation of how much time is needed to craft a physically demanding action sequence in recent years, one element that continues to let such sequences down is an inability to convey power behind a hit. This is something filmmakers appear to be aware of when they’re working with non-martial arts trained performers, ensuring they have a weapon in hand rather than be called upon to throw a convincing punch or kick, however most of these narratives see our protagonist go empty handed at some point. Just like Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Kate or Ruby Rose in The Doorman, here whenever Do-yeon throws a punch it’s painfully limp wristed, immediately taking the viewer out of the action and making the solid choreography that’s gone into the scene feel too transparent, losing any sense of impact and realism.

Those are my last Netflix-specific gripes, but overall it feels like Sung-hyun’s latest has an identity crisis, and it’s not just that it completely lacks the cinematic feel all of his previous productions come with. What Kill Boksoon is actually about is hard to say, with no real narrative thread being at the forefront, and far too much time spent on Do-yeon’s relationship with supporting characters that aren’t all that important. Esom (Microhabitat, Man on High Heels) makes a welcome appearance as the agencies 2^nd in command, however her performance comes across like nobody told her Kyung-gu’s character is her brother, instead acting as a seductive femme fatale towards him who’s jealous of his feelings towards Do-yeon. It’s a head scratching role considered in context, and tricky to ascertain exactly what Sung-hyun was aiming for.

Arguably it’s the assassin’s union which is the most entertaining aspect of Kill Boksoon. I recall when John Wick came out in 2014 I referred to it as a well done rip-off of the 2012 Korean flick A Company Man, in which So Ji-sub plays an assassin as if it’s any other white-collar job. Sung-hyun goes for something similar here, with the movies best fight involving an intern played by Lee Yeon (Height of the Wave, Cosmos) throwing down against a target in a grimy public bathroom, only for it to be revealed as a set for a training evaluation in the assassins grading academy (which turns out be based on one of Do-yeon’s own legendary hits from 5 year prior). Unfortunately Yeon adds yet another plot thread to the already overstuffed narrative by becoming the intern Do-yeon is paired with to oversee her first hit, playing a character whose look feels more than a little influenced by Kim Go-eun’s appearance in 2014’s Coin Locker Girl.

The origins of Do-yeon’s own character feel muddled at best, with some surprisingly dark implications that we see in flashbacks to the past apparently having zero bearing on how we’re supposed to feel towards her character in the present. Frankly it’s difficult not to conclude that Sung-hyun’s script likely didn’t get past a first draft, as the end result is both overly talky and frequently incoherent. For a movie about assassins, action scenes feel sparse, and whenever they do come there’s a heavy reliance on camera movement to create the kinetic energy such scenes need to feel convincing (and at this point aren’t we all bored of the obvious digital stitching to create a continuous shot?). Ultimately ‘convincing’ isn’t a word that I’d associate with Kill Boksoon, and I can’t help but feel that the whole thing would have been much more enjoyable if Hwang Jung-min had delivered on the title in his pre-credits cameo.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 4/10