[HanCinema's Film Review] "Kill Boksoon"

The title character Gil Boksoon (played by Jeon Do-yeon) is not to be confused with her stage name "Kill Boksoon" which is the title of this movie. In the world of "Kill Boksoon" huge sectors of the world economy appear to revolve around snuff films. I'm not being facetious about that, nearly the entire conflict revolves around the brother-and-sister team Chairman Cha (played by Sol Kyung-gu) and Director Cha (played by Esom) making corporate maneuvers in a quickly deteriorating business environment.

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"Kill Boksoon" is the kind of movie where I spent long stretches of time wondering what exactly this movie was even supposed to be about. The cold opening, where our heroine clad in a housekeeping uniform faces off against a Yakuza gangster played by Hwang Jung-min is straightforward enough. It's a neat fight, although it only lasts for maybe four minutes, there's a lot of talking before the fight actually starts, and it ends with a deliberately anticlimactic punchline.

These aspects wouldn't bother me so much except that "Kill Boksoon" then proceeds to go to great lengths to emphasize the whole corporate nature of the assassination business. Where the story really lost me was that, given how many people apparently view these assassination videos...is the business model actually getting people to pay for videos to watch the assassinations? Is that why Chairman Cha is working so hard to crack down on unsanctioned assassinations?

It's surprising how much of "Kill Boksoon" is so unclear with the basic worldbuilding considering how long the movie is, and I really do need to emphasize, the fight scenes aren't that long, or frequent, and significant chunks of them appear to take place in Boksoon's imagination as she anticipates possible battles she's likely to lose. Chairman Cha is played up as a potentially fearsome opponent although once again I'm not really sure why. As the corporate head, Chairman has far less recent field experience than Boksoon.

Bear in mind that it's not completely clear how important fighting skill actually is to this job. Yes, there's a whole training compound and Yeong-ji (played by Lee Yeon) comes to prominence in the plot as the the Cha Corporation's top-performing rookie. But aside from the Hwang Jung-min cold open, the only other job anyone goes on is to go kill some unremarkable creep behind a computer screen.

I'm only emphasizing the generally nonsensical economics of "Kill Boksoon" because "Kill Boksoon" also spends so much screentime on it, to the detriment of nearly every other possible plot point. Bok-soon's daughter Jae-yeong (played by Kim Si-a) shows an alarming propensity for violence at school that no one seems to be taking seriously despite the fact that she nearly killed somebody. Esom shows great charisma as an operations manager yet doesn't seem to have any idea what to do with her character. It took me way too long to realize that Chairman Cha was her brother just because of how sensuously Esom plays the role. Time and again "Kill Boksoon" just made me ask myself, OK, but why?

Written by William Schwartz

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"Kill Boksoon" is directed by Byun Sung-Hyun, and features Jeon Do-yeon, Sol Kyung-gu, Kim Si-a, Esom, Koo Kyo-hwan, Kim Sung-oh. Release date in Korea: 2023/03/31.