My thoughts on Kill Boksoon

The new Korean Netflix action thriller Kill Bok-Soon does prove to be something that can satisfy. Bok-Soon leads a double life. She is both the mother of a teenage daughter and the legendary professional killer at the top tier killing agency, MK Enterprises.

Caught in between the mission of killing someone and the mission of raising someone, Bok-Soon refuses to complete an assigned mission and is thrown into an inevitable fight. So we follow this female assassin, Boksoon, and from the opening sequence, we can see that she is highly skilled, smart and cunning, and extremely deadly. And we're shown that she's a huge problem solver.

She plays scenarios out in her mind in order to hopefully find the optimal outcome. Now, Boksoon works for this company that employs all sorts of assassins, and they have some rigid rules that are all participants have to adhere to. And one of them being that if you're given an assignment, you can't fail and you can't tank on an unsanctioned job.

Well, Boksoon breaks her perfect streak by refusing to finish a job, and that then brings ramifications to her. The movie does a good job of showing how Boksoon is trying to balance her assassin career and being a mom to a teenage daughter. Their interactions are strained and believable, but somehow I always felt at arm's length in the relationship.

The majority of the storytelling, it's linear, and the use of flashbacks helps to fill in gaps in character development, giving us a lot of insight into particular relationships. Now, I love seeing how Boksoon gets into the assassin world. There's this poignant scene that was a bit shocking, but it really fits with what we know of the character in the present.

And because of linear storytelling, most of the narrative is straightforward. But there are some very abrupt and strange transitions where some of the editing felt almost like a mistake rather than a storytelling choice. There's an intimate scene where a couple is having a conversation and a little bit of nookie, and it quickly cuts to another location with different characters.

Now, this choppy feeling made it difficult to follow certain portions of the story or at least understand why the jumps were made at these particular moments. That's not always the case, but sometimes it felt like I was having to work harder than normal to understand the tale. But then at other times, the editing and the transitions, they were flawless, using the motion of one sequence to match with another so that the change in a scene felt fluid and it looked great.

I think the biggest times when I noticed the transitions is when there were those sudden tonal shifts. Now, something that this movie excels at is the crazy action pieces. They're stylized, exciting and very immersively put together by some great camera movements that create seamless sequences that just put us into the action.

And they're very reminiscent of something that you'd see in John Wick. And there's not just one or two of them. We get a handful of battles and each one is creatively executed.

And it's awesome to experience. There's one towards the latter half of the movie where towards the end of the fighting, the melee is happening in two different rooms that are separated by a wall, the camera slowly spins around the characters and the wall to capture all the craziness that's happening. It makes for a continuous action scene filled with adrenaline and dread.

And then the final battle is a beautifully violent ballet of problem solving. We get to see a bunch of what ifs and the choreography is executed in spectacular ways, showing all kinds of brutality and bloodshed. And I love how so many of the fights show us much of the action, but also have some hidden element to them that unleashes this special gut punch when the moment's right, making them all the more impactful.

Now, for as much as I enjoyed the action and I like the character of Boksoon, the story asks us to be very invested in her. And despite her having some softer moments, I didn't feel an emotional connection to her in the way that I could feel what she was feeling. I mean, there are some points, especially towards the end of the film, where emotional climaxes occur.

And I just didn't find myself feeling for her in the way that the story was playing out. I mean, I was thrilled to watch her when she was kicking butt and I can get behind her motivations. But from an I feel bad because she feels bad perspective, it just wasn't there for me.

This is slightly on the longer side at 2 hours and 19 minutes. The story doesn't really drag, but some areas become less consequential than they initially appear. Some sequences deal with the MK Enterprises organization and all of the heads of the companies that participate.

I mean, it feels very gangster and even high table-ish. But when all is said and done, these pieces, they're not really important to show. We've already received lines of dialogue that lay out the rules of the organization.

So to have some posturing or chest puffing just feels like an unnecessary use of time. And I guess these are included so that there can be a brief action sequence. Now, that was fun and it's very violent, but ultimately it just wasn't important.

I love how the movie provides us insane action with brutality. The emotional elements are somewhat lacking and the story feels long in spots. But outside of that, the arcs are enjoyable and it's great to watch stylized martial arts and stabby sword mastery at work, creating excellent hand-to-hand combat that typically ends with punctured people.

If I'm being fair and honest, I think Kill Boksoon deserves a rating of 7/10. You might want to watch out for a little sex, maybe very brief nudity, a lot of profanity, and then a ton of bloody violence in the movie. Other than that, it does make fir a great movie. Thanks for your time.

Images source : IMDb