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Kill Boksoon directed by Byun Sung-hyun and starring Jeon Do-yeon, Kim Si-a, and Sol Kyung-gu, is a South Korean action-thriller grounded in drama (or more specifically, K-drama). Following Gil Bok-soon (whose name the film title is a play on), a top-class assassin and a mother to a teenage girl, we see the eponymous character fighting to balance her deadly career and the changing relationship with her 15-year-old daughter. Choosing to keep her profession a secret from her daughter Jae-young, and keeping up appearances with the other parents from the esteemed private school her daughter attends, Bok-soon lives a double life. She also fears that she is beginning to see the worst of herself in her daughter, which reflects her harsh judgment of her own life choices. During the course of this gripping movie, which expertly balances bloody action and delicate familial tension, we see Bok-soon gradually learn how to embrace both sides of herself.
Lying to Others to Hide Her True Self
Ranked “A” for her 100% kill success rate, Bok-soon has been at the top of her game for a long time — but her title is being eyed by others in the killing industry, and there are those that dare to suggest she is now past her once-unstoppable prime. Plus, her relationship with her daughter is at a crossroads; Jae-young has put walls up and won’t open up to her, no longer telling her about school and choosing to put a password on her phone. This junction that she finds herself at seems to make her even more determined to continue keeping her daughter in the dark when it comes to her job, maintaining a separation between these two fundamental parts of her life.
At a civilized education meeting with the mothers of her daughter’s school peers, she listens to the other mothers’ judgmental discussion of where is best to go away to for the summer. When confronted with the question of why she and Jae-young did not go away anywhere, she gives the half-truth that she was on a business trip, which further develops into a lie about working for an event-planning company. These stacks of lies reflect her distrust in these upper-class mothers, but more so, her lack of advocacy for herself. Of course, it would be dangerous to reveal her true profession, but reading between the lines, Bok-soon is not revealing anything of substance about her personal life.
This mirrors the lies she maintains with her daughter; she offers nothing truthful about her experiences in her job, but when discussing how to beat an opponent in a school debate to improve her grade, she advises her daughter to “tear them apart until they beg for mercy.” Clearly, she is unable to fully mask her true personality. Her daughter goes on to reveal that the famous figure she has chosen to advocate for in her debate is a female killer whom she admires because “killing isn’t an easy task,” for women, revealing the first hint that her daughter may be able to embrace Bok-soon’s authentic self after all, as she should also.
Embracing Jae-young is an Extension of Embracing Herself
Throughout the film, Bok-soon expresses her anxieties that Jae-young may be emulating the worst parts of her – a fear that other characters and the surrounding circumstances seem to reinforce. In an emotionally open conversation with her lover Han Hee-sung (Koo Kyo-hwan), she states that when her daughter reminds her of her younger self, it scares her. Furthermore, she says that after she has seen her reflection in the eyes of her dying victim, she is afraid to return home and look her daughter in the eye. This hints that she is projecting her internal shame onto her daughter, and until she can accept them both, she cannot embrace her full potential.
However, an incident at school just seems to prove her worst fears when Jae-young stabs a classmate, stating afterward that she intended to kill him. Bok-soon is upset by this, whereas the news is taken jokingly by her boss, Chairman Cha Min-kyu (Sol Kyung-gu), who asserts that she must have the same potential as her mother. She responds fiercely to this, in another sign that she is still unable to accept her true nature.
However, when both mother and daughter are forced to be vulnerable with one another and the truth is exposed, Bok-soon learns an important lesson about embracing oneself. Whilst her initial reaction to Jae-young coming out is far from ideal (in fact she barely reacts, and then rushes off to a work crisis), she later tells her that she hasn’t done anything wrong, and shouldn’t hide. Jae-young subsequently finds out that her mom is a killer, and whilst she had always had her suspicions, witnessing it on camera is a graphic and rude awakening about who her mother really is. Bok-soon is distraught at the idea of her daughter’s discovery, however, on arriving home, Jae-young simply asks her if she’s had a long day and tells her to get some rest, in a way that implies that she accepts her mom for who she is. In embracing each other, they can finally embrace themselves, and Jae-young leaves her bedroom door open as a symbol of the opened channel between the two. Their journey is a winning blend of conflict and love which is often seen in the best mother-daughter movies.
Why We Should All Embrace Our Duality
Gil Bok-soon is taught a crucial lesson about self-acceptance thanks to both her daughter and the inevitability that the truth will come out. It is this duality of self, described earlier in the movie by her lover Han Hee-sung as being the irony intrinsic to life, that Bok-soon has to embrace. She has always acknowledged that killing is the easy part, and mothering is the hard part — but one way to let these two halves co-exist within herself is to understand that it is okay (and even good) to have light and dark inside ourselves. It is this duality that makes us human, and the real strength is in our self-acceptance of it.
We see this self-acceptance building gradually throughout the film, often inspired by her daughter. Likely led by her daughter’s earlier-expressed opinions on a truly fair society, Bok-soon allows herself to fail a “show,” (their term for a hit job) for the first time ever for ethical reasons, and afterward, she is more decisive about her contract renewal demands, which she had been evading prior to this. Furthermore, she puts herself first in a kill-or-be-killed situation involving her former assassin friends which include her lover, choosing ruthless self-preservation over friendship to survive. At the movie’s climax, she also decides to take on her boss in an emotionally taut and riveting final showdown, finally standing up for herself. Similarly, her daughter confronts her ex-girlfriend’s betrayal before leaving for her new school in a mid-credits scene. The decisiveness with which their storylines conclude is a testament to Bok-soon’s newfound ease with herself, showing once and for all that it’s good to embrace who you are.
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