Kill Boksoon is a South Korean action flick about a professional assassin who tries to keep her fifteen year old daughter unaware of her job. And how she may have made a mistake that turns her corporate assassin overlords against her.

My main issue with this action flick is it’s disturbing lack of action. There are a few action scenes but mainly this is 2+ hours of talky bits swirling around too much plot that seems disjointed. Very little of the story jells, least of all the plot involving the teenage daughter. It seems to forget that plot for long stretches and then, when it circles back to it, it never really goes anywhere interesting. And that’s a microcosm of a lot of the random plot elements and abundance of incidental characters.

The action scenes are pretty good… though a few of them only seem to exist to justify calling this an action film at all. But they tend to use long takes and are reasonably satisfying as pure action. If only there were more of it or the movie itself was much shorter and more focused.

I was disappointed by this film. I wanted to enjoy it since the premise of a mom assassin keeping her kid clear of the life is pretty good. A kind of Mr. and Mrs. Smith angle smashed into a John Wick style assassin business. Unfortunately, every time I thought about how the movie hangs together, the more issues with length, pacing, and story cohesion crept in. It’s also possible that there’s a cultural familiarity with the stars that was lost on me. Whatever it was, I was a bit let down by the film. It’s not terrible, but it struggles too much with itself.

Score: 74