The newest Korean film now available on Netflix promises to be a great plot to watch this week. The story revolves around Gil Boksoon (Jeon Do-yeon), a renowned assassin at work and a single mother of a teenage girl at home. Although these seem like impossible activities to reconcile, this is Boksoon’s double life, as shown in the action movie “Kill Boksoon”, which premiered on March 31st exclusively on Netflix.
The film follows a week in the unusual life of Boksoon, as he begins to question his contract renewal with MK, the high-profile assassin agency he works for, and becomes involved in a “kill or be killed” situation. The reason behind this crisis of conscience is his increasingly complicated relationship with his teenage daughter, Gil Jae-young (Kim Si-A). As Boksoon reflects in one of the scenes, “Killing someone is easy, raising a child is difficult”.
Directed by Byun Sung-hyun (The Merciless, Kingmaker), the film was invited to the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival and it is the first action movie starring Jeon.
The film’s concept was inspired by personal conversations between Byun and Jeon, the first Korean to win the Best Actress award at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, for her role in the 2007 film Sol Secreto. In Kill Boksoon, Kyung-gu plays Cha Min-kyu, the president of the MK assassin agency.
Byun’s inspirations came from Jeon’s conversations with his 14-year-old daughter in real life to create the character of Jeon Do-yeon in Kill Boksoon. According to Byun, mother Jeon Do-yeon and actress Jeon Do-yeon seemed like two different people, which led him to think that if he changed her profession from actress to assassin, the result would be quite contradictory and ironic.
Running away from the typical action productions about revenge that end with a big final fight, the film highlights the dramatic part of the hitmen, subverting the cliché image of these characters.
Although Kill Boksoon’s plot is improbable, the film’s complex characters demonstrate universal values such as personal growth and the importance of family, generating audience identification. According to Byun, “instead of an action movie full of explosions, it’s an educational movie, where the daughter learns from her mother and vice versa”.