Kill Boksoon 2023 Movie Review
There must be fairness, even in a death duel. Boksoon ( Jeon Do-yeon ) takes her daughter’s ( Kim Si-A ) teaching seriously and has even left a pillow for the exposed yakuza boss. He lies stark naked on the asphalt. Kidnapped, just woken up, now he has to face his tormentor in close combat: samurai sword against axe. Director and screenwriter Byun Sung-hyun ( “Kingmaker” ) doesn’t keep the audience in suspense for long in his thriller until people attack each other in sophisticated and rabid fight choreographies. Consequentially, after all, that’s exactly what “Kill Boksoon” is all about: great, thrilling spectacle!
Byun Sung-hyun creates a world in which contract killings are called “show”. On television, reporters jump at the sensation whenever a corpse turns up somewhere. Violence becomes art. Gil Boksoon, the protagonist of this South Korean thriller, doesn’t fool anyone. She’s a master assassin employed by an agency that does the dirty work for her clients. But as befits such stories, it comes as it must: Boksoon’s fame is crumbling. An order goes wrong, the killer refuses to work and becomes the hunted herself.
What initially sounds like off-the-peg goods turns out to be an extremely sophisticated piece of genre cinema that allows private and systemic conflicts to flow into one another in a complex way. Kill Boksoon shows its protagonist as a character with rough edges who struggles with her dual role. When she sits with other acquaintances over a cup of coffee and listens to holiday stories, she thinks of her very own business trips and the next image of a severed throat flickers through. A good role model for your daughter?
However, Kill Boksoon does not conclude from this the sexist assumption that his protagonist would be better served as a housewife. No, this is about thwarting role models and trying to establish your own rules and gray areas. As a mother, Gil has long since been written off by the executive floor. You think she’s been effeminate since her daughter was born. And indeed: Although Boksoon insists that killing is easier than raising children, the bloody work was also easier to do.
Is it all a question of bad conscience, then? Not at all! The generational conflict that unfolds with Boksoon’s daughter Jae-young is cleverly chosen because it raises doubts about the violence to a higher level. Byun Sung-hyun uses the mafia and gangster milieu to tell something about a social system that thrives on eating and being eaten. Either one learns to adopt violent enforcement for personal advancement, or one ends up in a predator’s cage. When Boksoon’s daughter comes into contact with such mechanisms in everyday school life, the situation becomes explosive. And of course staging is everything! The staging of power, dominance, class affiliation begins here with impeccable clothing and ends with the horribly draped victim.
The acts of violence are sometimes beguilingly beautiful to look at. People fight and stab each other in brightly lit pubs while snow trickles through a hole in the ceiling. In one scene, Boksoon and a student attack each other in an artificial setting: bodies wrestle to the sound of guitars, the floor rocks up and down with seasickness. Violence as expressive dance. Elsewhere, the camera circles around the killers in long shots. The world is a computer game, a simulation. Or else: a single “show”.
There is a certain double standard in how long such ideas manage without major formal breaks. They are quite appealing in their attractions, the choreographies are reminiscent of disturbing excesses of violence à la The Raid and The Night Comes For Us or exaggerated to the point of slapstick and fun splatter. Perhaps a more critical engagement with these show values still falls short over long stretches and would hold significantly more potential to make up for one or the other length and repetition in the middle part.
At the same time, Byun Sung-hyun obviously knows about the blind spot that his stylized violence entails. In the film’s most exciting scene, his medium comes into self-reflexion. Looks play through situations, characters split further and further into doppelgangers to die a dozen deaths. Of course, it’s only possible in film in this way. Until those looks recognize their own game. A camera consistently comes into focus. The process of finding that Kill Boksoon tells in more than two hours thus develops a considerable emotional impact. Precisely because he keeps both options open at all times: is this an act of rebellion, an escape from the hamster wheel? Or just about recognizing what has long been lost anyway?
