'Kill Boksoon' on Netflix: Review

The action-comedy Kill Boksoon, available on Netflix, is about a single mother who works as a contract killer while also trying to maintain a decent relationship with her teen daughter. And Boksoon isn't just any contract killer; he's the best of the best. Being a contract killer is a physically and mentally taxing job that makes it hard to be open and honest with your kids. Korean producer Byun Sung-hyun involves the reason as a way to balance homegrown show with over-the-top activity, which is somewhat of a difficult exercise; Now, let's see if he keeps his word and comes up with something new.

KILL BOKSOON: SKIP IT OR STREAM IT?

The Basics: Despite the fact that her name is Gil Boksoon (Jeon Do-yeon), the film's title refers to her by her nickname. We initially meet her while she does what she excels at: slay. She is standing in front of a Yakuza samurai gentleman who is excellent with a katana. She battles fair from the outset, coordinating his abilities with an ax she says she purchased at Walmart. During a delay in the skirmish, she investigates a puddle and sees herself executed by the man with the sword, a slick stunt proposing she can "see the future," and has an intuition about surveying her rival and expecting their next series of moves - if it's not too much trouble, record this for future reference, since it's the very kind of story gadget a film will use to confuse you. She ends it with a gun because she determines that the only way out of this is to forego fairness, honor, and all that other crap. The "noble" samurai is upset about this, but when you're a brutal assassin, that's how the cookie crumbles into a pool of your own blood that quickly coagulates.

However, Boksoon lacks foresight when it comes to (insert record-scratching fzwoop sound here) becoming a parent of a teen! Her 15-year-old daughter, Jae-yeong (Kim Si-a), is more formidable than a dozen experienced life-savers equipped with bazookas, knives, daggers, machetes, 9mms, wavy South Asian swords, and other deadly weapons. From her obviously lucrative day job, Boksoon drives her tank-like Benz SUV to her home with marble floors and a kitchen the size of an enormous dome, where neither a hand grenade nor a hand cannon can harm Jae-yeong. It doesn't help that Mom here keeps her real job a secret by saying that she works for "an event planning company," which isn't a real lie but definitely a spirit-based lie. Boksoon finds cigarettes in Jae-yeong's clothing; Boksoon is unaware of Jae-yeong's preference for kissing girls; You know how to do it. Teenagers: You can't live with them and you can't kill them like you kill everyone else who is a problem.

Thus, we have a real case of a double life: Boksoon is an unsuccessful single parent in one. In the alternative, Boksoon is a superstar of the assassin class. He works as a top-level killer for MK Enterprises, a corporate organization that hires and trains people in the art of brutal killing. Chairman Cha Min-kyu (Sol Kyung-gu), with his younger sister Cha Min-hee (Esom) serving as acting director, is led by a sibling duo. The company is a bit shady, but not so much that it doesn't have some prominent real estate. Min-kyu manages a professional killer's organization, where everybody consents to a governing set of rules, and basically admires "Kill" Boksoon as the cream of the hitperson crop - however would she say she is over the hill? Are you sluggish? Developing a conscience (GASP)? Except for this one, she adheres to the rules and completes any task Min-kyu assigns her. This one, which implicates her intern (Kim Yeong-ji) and a fellow MK murderer (Koo Kyo-hwan), with whom she occasionally fights, crosses a very wide and very thick line. Boksoon, on the other hand, receives a call from the school principal informing her that Jae-yeong stabbed a child in the neck with scissors. When Boksoon inquires as to why, Jae-yeong flatly responds that she was attempting to kill the child. It could be that Boksoon's personal and professional lives are becoming more and more intertwined.

What films will it bring to mind? Kill Boksoon appears to have been influenced by Grosse Pointe Blank, John Wick, and Kill Bill. It also makes references to classic Hong Kong martial arts and gunplay films, but it has some of the megachoreographed, digitally enhanced action of Extraction.

Performing Arts to Watch: Jeon is very great at staying quiet about her personality's internal struggle as she knifes the life out of a brother or smiles and bears it at lunch with the PTA mothers. Instead of allowing so much narrative sprawl, you just wish the movie would have placed the majority of the drama on her shoulders so she could really engage with the character.

Memorable Conversation: Boksoon's ruthless strategy is: Finding their weaknesses is crucial. Regardless of whether you need to make one for them."

Skin and sex: A brief sex scene in which we only see Boksoon's terrifyingly large scars on his back.

Our view: Kill Boksoon spills a lot of digital blood, which is a big no-no in action movies. Consider yourself warned. However, this does not necessitate that. No, the movie raises the age-old question of whether or not one wants to watch a lot of plot and character stuff to get to the good stuff. For example, action movies have chases and shootouts, martial arts movies have punching, leaping, and kicking, Hulk movies have Hulk-smash, and porn movies have porn. Boksoon has a lot of "other" stuff, some of which is pretty good, like the ironic parallels between her two lives and how she learns that she can't be both a good, warm, loving, open, effective, and affecting parent. You can't be both moral and moral at the same time and not end up in a predicament.

Byun, who is also the film's writer and director, carefully maintains the mood by balancing gloomy comedy with sometimes overly heavy melodrama. There are many lighthearted jokes about death in this film. Furthermore, something else for better and somewhat for more terrible, he coordinates the damnation out of the activity, underlining hand-to-hand and blade battles, with an intermittent headshot-blissful twists, keeping a sharp equilibrium between invigorating energy and ridiculous droll. However, the main issue with Boksoon is the script, which tries to flesh out the underworld of Korean contract killers (Wick did it better) with talky scenes and clever but pointless action (Min-kyu travels to Russia to kill a bunch of guys, which is always fun, but here it's unnecessary) and diverts too much attention from the relationship between the mother and daughter.

The movie runs a whopping 137 minutes, which is a good half-hour too long. It builds up to a final confrontation that doesn't end well, so we have to wade through watchable but mediocre material to get to the good stuff, which isn't bad but could be better. Boksoon hurls a lot of punches, but not enough of them land.

Our Demand: Kill Boksoon is admirably ambitious and delivers occasional thrills and smirky laughs, but it is too scattered to be enjoyable. Until someone savagely edits it, SKIP IT..

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