Move over, John Wick – the killer of the second is Gil Boksoon. She’s a mum and assassin, a lover and a liar, and the protagonist of Netflix’s blood-spattered new film Kill Boksoon.
Korean drama followers will know lead actress Jeon Do-yeon most just lately as Haeng-seon, the handball player-turned-side dish vendor within the candy collection Crash Course in Romance, whereas cinephiles will recognise her because the Cannes award-winning star of Lee Chang-dong’s 2007 movie Secret Sunshine.
However underneath the route of Byun Sung-hyun, Jeon transforms into the cool-as-you-like Gil Boksoon, an A-list murderer whose dedication to her firm MK Leisure wavers as she considers how you can restore her fraying relationship along with her daughter. She negotiates life-or-death jobs, spats along with her child and firm politics – all whereas grappling with the query of what she actually needs.
Let Byun, Jeon and co-star Sul Kyung-gu inform you what to anticipate from Kill Boksoon earlier than you dive into its cutthroat world come March 31.
Lights, digicam – motion
Kill Boksoon hooks you from the very begin with a nighttime showdown between Boksoon and a loincloth-clad Japanese yakuza (Hwang Jung-min) on Seoul’s Dongho Bridge. It’s considered one of a number of dizzying motion scenes within the film, all assorted in setting (a medical boardroom; a dirty restaurant) and weaponry decisions (from swords and weapons to the much less typical marker pen).
“These characters struggle with their lives on the road” – Sul Kyung-gu
Jeon skilled for 4 months to play Boksoon, the primary motion position in her 30-year-long profession – and he or she was thrilled to strive one thing new, although understandably slightly intimidated. “I really wish to strive quite a lot of totally different genres however possibilities don’t come that straightforward,” she recollects of her determination to conform to the film with out even studying its script. However she did have some reservations: “I used to be scared as a result of I didn’t know if I might pull it off.”
Certainly, the struggle scenes in Kill Boksoon are elaborate, particularly as a result of Boksoon runs by means of each potential state of affairs and final result in her head earlier than deciding on a plan of action. Within the climactic battle, Boksoon’s thoughts is whirring – her psychological workout routines enjoying out on display as a veritable ballet of violence.
Credit score: No Ju-han / Netflix
“These characters struggle with their lives on the road, however on the set we had a lot enjoyable,” says Sul Kyung-gu, who as MK Leisure chairman Cha Min-kyu oversees his personal one-man-show in a smoky Russian bar. The struggle scenes as they seem within the last lower are “deadly however crisp”, he says – to be totally savoured as they could very properly be the final for each main woman Jeon and director Byun.
“After I wrapped Kill Boksoon, I believed, ‘I’m by no means doing motion once more,’” Jeon reveals. Whereas directing motion scenes, Byun says, “I used to be grateful however I felt very sorry on the identical time… As a result of I might see it was so bodily difficult for the actors, I even stated that I’ll by no means shoot an motion film ever once more.”
Murderer world-building
Kill Boksoon premieres per week after the fourth installment of the John Wick collection, a franchise that Byun has acknowledged as an inspiration. He’s additionally a fan of Scorsese and Tarantino, and expresses his admiration for Korean cinema of the early 2000s: “For motion scenes, I attempt to comply with the model of director Lee Myung-se, however his model is simply so immaculate I can’t be half pretty much as good.”
Credit score: No Ju-han / Netflix
Whereas giving his influences their flowers, in Kill Boksoon Byun nonetheless places his personal spin on the murderer style by turning this council of killer organisations into one thing akin to an leisure conglomerate. He additionally repurposes the verbiage of the display trade: Jobs and assignments are “exhibits”; whereas assassins are on the scene they’re on “set”; and murderers-in-training put together to make their “debuts”. Boksoon is caught in a bind over her “contract renewal” – a phrase that ought to give viewers invested in South Korea’s real-life leisure trade an excellent chuckle.
“After I wrapped Kill Boksoon, I believed, ‘I’m by no means doing motion once more’” – Jeon Do-yeon
Gil Boksoon: sophisticated and conflicted
As Gil Boksoon, Jeon Do-yeon is the bruised, beating coronary heart of the film. Boksoon has been written as a bundle of contradictions, beginning along with her title, which Byun cribbed from considered one of Jeon’s real-life aunts: “Boksoon, the character, she’s purported to be refined and stylish, however the title Boksoon is kind of old school and lovely,” the actress explains.
Credit score: No Ju-han / Netflix
A chilly-hearted killer who takes meticulous care of her houseplants and a mom who’ll scold her daughter for smoking whereas lighting a cigarette up herself, Boksoon is inconsistent – and, when dropped at life by Jeon, movingly human. She’s a “practical mum”, as Jeon places it, deeply impressed by her personal experiences as a mom. And when you put aside its gory, larger-than-life premise, Kill Boksoon finally charts the unravelling of a lady who thinks she has all of it discovered.
Characters to recollect
Jeon Do-yeon shines in Kill Boksoon, however her castmates are given loads to play with, too. There are layers and ranges to each character, even the younger’uns: Boksoon’s sullen teenage daughter Jae-young (the superb Kim Si-a, solely 14) is going through a manipulative bully at college, whereas MK Leisure intern Yeong-ji (Lee Yeon) grapples with each her coaching and her worship of her idol Boksoon.
Credit score: No Ju-han / Netflix
Notably compelling is the triangle of Boksoon, her mentor Min-kyu (Sul Kyung-gu) and his jealous sister Min-hee (Taxi Driver’s Esom). Min-kyu, the chairman of Boksoon’s firm MK, met her when she was 17, turning into her mentor and even “saviour”, Sul explains. “He’s sturdy, however in relation to Boksoon he will get actually narrow-minded and at all times goes smooth on her. So he has this blind love for her.” On the flipside is Min-hee, MK’s venomous and unpredictable director whose dynamic along with her brother has a definite whiff of Sport of Thrones about it.
Credit score: No Ju-han / Netflix
Boksoon additionally has a sophisticated relationship with Han Hee-sung (Koo Kyo-hwan), a younger, gifted however disaffected skilled at MK. This character has quite a lot of director Byun in him: “I’m idealistic and revolutionary however in motion I compromise with what’s given to me and I am going after the cash,” Byun explains. “I used to be fairly dissatisfied with my actuality after I was in my twenties, and people factors are what I had in thoughts when creating this character.”
Credit score: No Ju-han / Netflix
Hee-sung is a colleague and good friend of Boksoon’s, and typically even a confidante. However he additionally resents her and her technology at MK for suppressing his and his friends’ development, a dynamic that channels Byun’s observations of society at this time: “The problem of monopolising on the planet of assassins, the failed generational shift from veteran killers to youthful killers, the place the up-and-coming ones can not uphold their positions and finally fail… This was a metaphor that I wished to make use of to inform the story of what’s going on in our society nowadays, with our youthful technology.”
One thing for everyone
The richness of Kill Boksoon’s characters makes the film far more than an motion flick. “To Boksoon, this film could also be a narrative of private progress; to Min-kyu, a melodrama; to [Jae-young], an academic film – not the one the place the mum educates her little one however the different means round,” says Byun.
Credit score: No Ju-han / Netflix
Delving into doomed romance, household drama, coming-of-age epiphany and even a little bit of uproarious slapstick, Kill Boksoon weaves so many threads into its 138 minutes. Byun sees it as “a really unrealistic story however with common values”. When the act of homicide is normalised as a job properly accomplished, how does one do the best factor? “The query I wished to pose was, ‘Every thing is a paradox: When the road between good and dangerous turns into blurred, what’s the most moral normal?’” Byun provides.
“The conclusion that I got here to was that I must be true to myself. This was additionally the primary message I wished to convey by means of this film.”
Kill Boksoon streams on Netflix from March 31
