Capsule Review: Kill Boksoon 길복순 (2023)
Jeon Do-Yeon, who famously became the first South Korean actress to win the prestigious Best Actress award at Cannes for Secret Sunshine in 2007, finally made her first action role.
In Kill Boksoon, she plays a top assassin named Gil Bok-Soon who works for MK Enterprise, an agency which runs a global business in contract killing under the leadership of siblings Chairman Cha Min-Kyu (Sol Kyung-Gu) and his younger sister-director, Cha Min-Hee (Esom). Gil is very good at what she does but beyond her profession, things aren’t the same back home. We learn she’s a single mum with a rebellious teenage daughter, Jae-Yeong (Kim Si-A). In other words, parenting for Gil isn’t as easy and smooth sailing as she murders someone in her job.
The idea of enlisting one of the best South Korean actresses like Jeon Do-Yeon to play an assassin and the kind that is physically demanding sounds interesting enough. The title itself is obviously a homage to Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill and even the premise itself, particularly the contract-killing agency houses a team of assassins instantly reminds of the John Wick franchise. Do-Yeon is convincing in a role that requires her to fight like a seasoned martial artist and handles different types of weapons from an axe to a knife and a sword.
Some of the action scenes are choreographed with enough style and verve, notably the opening nighttime one-on-one duel between Do-Yeon’s Gil Bok-Soon and a sword-wielding Japanese gangster. At one point, we see a fight scene takes place within the reflection of a dark puddle on the ground. Then, there’s the showstopping action set piece in the middle of the movie — an elaborate fight between Gil Bok-Soon and her assassin buddies from the same and different agencies in a restaurant. Weapons, even the makeshift ones from knives to scissors, chopsticks and sizzling hot oil are used throughout the violent fight scene, all gleefully staged to thrilling effects and reckless abandon.
Too bad the movie drags a lot with its lengthy 137-minute runtime that could have used some serious trimming. Problem is, writer-director Byun Sung-Hyun wants to cover everything in a single package — a mix of a stylish and violent action thriller with a dose of dark comedy and all things drama. The latter includes the estranged relationship between Gil Bok-Soon and her teenage daughter. We also have a subplot related to Gil Bok-Soon’s daughter, who has a secret lesbian relationship with a fellow female student at school. The drama doesn’t stop there as the movie features a complicated relationship between Gil Bok-Soon and her boss, Cha Min-Kyu and we even get flashbacks about them every now and then.
The result? The way Byun Sung-Hyun chose to tell his story is best described as bloated and overkill. The movie is barely funny with the so-called witty dialogues that come across as stale and desperate. The dramatic parts lack the necessary emotion to make me care about these characters in the movie. And as much as I enjoy some of the action scenes here, the movie’s over-reliance on CGI and hyper-stylised camerawork tends to dilute the visceral experience. An actress of such a calibre as Jeon Do-Yeon certainly deserved better screen treatment than this overlong and frankly, disappointing action thriller.
Kill Boksoon is currently streaming on Netflix.
