The Old Woman with the Knife (2025) Review

“The Old Woman with the Knife” Theatrical Poster

Director: Min Gyoo-dong
Cast: Lee Hye-Young, Kim Sung-Cheol, Yeon Woo-Jin,  Kim Moo-Yul, Kim Kang-Woo, Shin Shi-A
Running Time: 122 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

It’s been at least 5 minutes since a female assassin movie has hit either the big screen or a streaming service, so to ensure any withdrawal symptoms are avoided, in 2025 Korea stepped up to the table with The Old Woman with the Knife. The Korean film industry has been on the female assassin bandwagon for a while already, with the likes of Kim Ok-bin in 2017’s The Villainess, Jeon Do-yeon in 2023’s Kill Boksoon, and Jeon Jong-seo in Ballerina from the same year all delivering a dose of femme fatale action with varying degrees of success. The selling point for this latest entry in the genre is its focus on a female assassin in the twilight years of her career, with Lee Hye-young (The Anchor, Raging Years) playing a legendary killer who’s been in the business for 50 years, with no plans to retire.

Those plans are upended though when she’s seriously injured during one of her hits, and wakes up in a veterinary clinic, having been taken in for treatment by the kindly doctor who found her collapsed on the street. With a ‘leave no witnesses’ policy, Hye-young’s decision to let the doctor live causes tensions in the assassin agency which she oversees, especially from a recently hired young upstart with a vicious streak, who takes an unusually close interest in her activities both in and outside of work. Played by Kim Sung-cheol (Troll Factory, The Battle of Jangsari), his discovery of Hye-young’s decision soon puts the innocent family at risk, and Hye-young has to decide if they’re worth protecting. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Gu Byeong-mo, published in 2013, onscreen the result is an uneven mix of believability stretching violence and melodrama stereotypes (the kind that Korean cinema has cultivated so well over the years).

Much like the exorcism genre, the assassin genre has become so saturated over the last 10 years that the template for such stories rarely offers up any surprises. Usually ending up as some variation of – assassin doesn’t go through with a hit, ends up becoming a target themselves, while (in most cases) also needing to protect the target that they let go – TOWwtK (as I’ll refer to it from here on) sticks to the template to a T. The challenge for any director then is what freshness they can bring to a genre that feels so structurally limited, and here Min Gyoo-dong looks to leverage the age angle. As a director Gyoo-dong debuted with the 1999 Korean Wave classic Memento Mori, and over the last 25+ years has proved himself an effective filmmaker across multiple genres. From comedy with Everything About my Wife, period raunch with The Treacherous, tearjerker drama like Herstory, and even sci-fi with The Prayer.

TOWwtK marks the first time for him to venture into action thriller territory, and if one thing can’t be argued it’s that the casting of Lee Hye-young is a masterstroke. While in recent years Hye-young has become a Hong Sang-soo regular (most recently featuring in 2024’s A Traveler’s Needs), her filmography dates back to 1982 when she debuted in Mother’s Wedding at 19, remaining a fixture on Korean cinema screens ever since. Her collaboration with Gyoo-dong marks the second time for Hye-young to headline an action thriller, with the first coming in the form of Ryoo Seung-wan’s sophomore feature from 2003, No Blood No Tears (which ironically paired her with Kill Boksoon leading lady Jeon Do-yeon), and her character is easily the best thing about TOWwtK.

As an assassin in her latter years a medical condition has resulted in a shaky hand, and her body can’t heal as fast as it used to, making for an unusually vulnerable protagonist. Thankfully her experience still makes her a danger, able to draw a weapon on potential victims without them even noticing, and her unassuming appearance allows her to blend into the crowd (an ideal trait for stabbing a target with a poisoned needle on a crowded train). It’s particularly refreshing to see in her first real fight that her slight figure is easily overpowered by the bigger opponent, a reflection of all the cunning in the world not being much use if there’s someone double your size in front of you determined to stay alive. For some reason though, after this scene Gyoo-dong does a 180 on how the action is approached, and once Hye-young decides to protect the doctor who saved her, she effectively becomes The Woman from Nowhere.

It almost feels as if they couldn’t quite decide on how to frame the action, so we go from a protagonist who’s vulnerable and easily overpowered, to one who’s a relentless killing machine, able to stroll into a nightclub and start taking out multiple bodyguards like she owns the place. It’s a jarring shift, made all the more so by the fact the initial approach was so different, and the transition never really convinces. It’s not the only personality disorder that TOWwtK suffers from though, with it feeling like there was a meaner and grittier version of the story somewhere underneath. The perfect example is a scene where the doctor chases after Hye-young, and once they’re in a secluded spot she steps out of the shadows, slitting his throat which covers her face in arterial blood spray. It immediately then cuts to him still chasing her, revealing the prior scene to (presumably) be a clumsy attempt at what Hye-young may have been contemplating.

Unfortunately though it just comes across as a cheap shock tactic, without actually wanting to commit to the shock itself, the biggest problem being that TOWwtK would have been far more interesting if the imagined scene actually happened. Other parts of the plot feel strangely underbaked, like the introduction of a limping character played by Kim Kang-woo (The Childe, Recalled) who appears to be the de facto manager of the agency, and who’s started taking on hits that go against the agencies principle. The assassins call themselves “pest control” whose job it is to “kill bugs”, with the classic trait of only assassinating those who deserve it, but Kang-woo has started to say yes to everything. It’s something that’s mentioned a couple of times, however nothing is really done with it and nor does it create any conflict that impacts the narrative, so it ultimately feels superfluous.

Far more interesting are the flashbacks to 1975, when a teenage runaway Hye-young (played by Shin Si-ah – clocking in her sophomore feature length appearance after debuting as the lead in 2022’s The Witch: Part 2. The Other One) is taken under the wing of an assassin played by Kim Mu-yeol (Space Sweepers, The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil). After accidentally killing an American GI who was attempting to rape her, Mu-yeol tells her not to worry since she’s “just killed a bug”, and her apprenticeship begins. The flashback scenes give Mu-yeol the opportunity to flex his knife skills last seen in The Roundup: Punishment, but more significantly they answer the earlier question of how to make the assassin genre still feel fresh in 2025. I would have happily watched a whole movie about a female assassin operating in 1975 Korea, but as it is the scenes with Si-ah and Mu-yeol are mostly there to humanise Hye-young’s character in the present.

TOWwtK truly jumps the shark though in its action heavy finale, that takes any credibility that may have been remaining around the capabilities of a slight 65-year-old assassin, and throws them into the shredder. Set in an under construction circular building, by the time Hye-young grabs a rope and jumps off an upper floor, swinging around and blasting away at the bad guys like a senior citizen version of Angeline Jolie’s bungee cord scene in Tomb Raider, the only thing left to do was laugh at the audaciousness of it all. What should have been a grounded and gritty finale highlighting her 50 years of experience as an assassin, instead ends up as a circus act, although admittedly a very bloody one.

On the plus side, in an early scene Hye-young adopts a dog, so if anything when it comes to the inevitable male counterpart comparisons, hopefully it means that instead of the all too common “female John Wick” references, we’ll get a “female Gino Felino” quote instead. As it is, The Old Woman with the Knife feels like a missed opportunity for all involved.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10