Netflix’s latest thriller Kill Boksoon has been winning over viewers on the streaming platform with its slick action. Already drawing comparisons to movies like John Wick and Kill Bill, it’s currently sitting at the third position in the streamer’s most-watched film list worldwide.
The South Korean crime action movie is written and directed by Byun Sung-hyun, and follows a legendary assassin called Gil Bok-soon (played by Jeon Do-yeon). But while her reputation precedes her at work, it’s her home life that’s the issue as a single mum to a teenage girl. As the movie’s strap suggests, killing is easy, it's parenting that's the hard part.
Reviews have been predominantly favorable for the new movie so far. "Fans of over-the-top John Wick-style action movies and devotees of art-house cinema should each find something to like in Kill Boksoon, a hired-killer thriller starring Jeon Do-yeon, one of South Korea’s most accomplished and acclaimed actresses," writes the Los Angeles Times.
"Kill Boksoon seems inspired by the John Wicks and Kill Bills, and maybe Grosse Pointe Blank," writes Decider. "It also nods to classic Hong Kong martial arts and gunplay cinema, but with some of the digitally enhanced mega-choreographed action of stuff like Extraction."
The Guardian gives it four stars, writing: "Writer-director Byun Sung-hyun, an up-and-coming director, handles the action sequences with real flair, but does an even better job limning the complex, sometimes fraught relationships – especially the mother-daughter one between Bok-soon and Jae-yeong."
Although, not all reviews have been so glowing with Variety calling it "stylish but airless". "CG blood spurts cleanly through the air with, at worst, a stray stripe landing attractively across Boksoon’s high cheekbone," writes their reviewer. "By-the-numbers action music plays, synthesizing tension that never feels quite natural."
