EXCLUSIVE | Director Byun Sung-Hyun never wanted 'Kill Boksoon' to be about 'motherly love' or 'sacrifice'
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Korean filmmaker Byun Sung-Hyun felt surreal when he got to know that his latest movie ‘Kill Boksoon’ was going to be screened at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. It was one of the most extraordinary moments for a filmmaker who is known for his unique style of filmmaking. The Netflix movie chronicles the journey of a female assassin named Gil Bok-soon (Jeon Do-Yeon) who is also a single mother to a teenage daughter. Things start to go downhill when Gil isn’t able to complete her mission and she gets chased by her agency.
At first look, the movie will sound like a traditional movie based on a hired or contract killer. However, as the movie progresses, viewers get to know that they are watching something special and not just some clichéd movie about an assassin. It was really important for the filmmaker to do something that has never been attempted before and give a twist to this sub-genre.
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EXCLUSIVE | Jeon Do-Yeon feels 'Kill Boksoon' is 'proof' that she can pull off 'unexpected genres'
In an EXCLUSIVE interview with Byun Sung-Hyun, the director opened up about the “three things” that he didn’t want to show in the action-drama and why this movie is not “just” about motherhood.
“When you hear the subject matters of the killer and mother-daughter relationships, everybody has a scenario that they can easily predict. Either the daughter is kidnapped, or the daughter dies and you want to avenge her, or third, you have to fight to protect your daughter. I wanted to make sure that we avoided these three perspectives, even in the acting sequences as well. I wanted to make sure that Boksoon will never fight anonymous characters in the film, that person will only fight characters that the audience has become introduced to or gotten to know through the story. I wanted to make sure ‘Kill Boksoon’ wasn't going to be a film about motherhood, or about motherly love, or about the sacrifice that was driven by motherhood,” Sung-hyun told MEA Worldwide.
For him, ‘Kill Boksoon’ is a story about the mother and daughter relationship where they both “achieve personal growth” as individuals.
The title and the setting of ‘Kill Boksoon’ seem to be making references to iconic franchises like ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘John Wick’. The Netflix movie is filled with gloriously choreographed action sequences that are stylish and colorful. Did color scheming play a big role in storytelling? According to Sung-Hyun, it did because all the colors used during pivotal scenes have a story to tell.
“As for the use of colors, we did use a lot of different colors, but in particular, we used a lot of contrast between red and green. Green is the color that represents how the mother wants to see her daughter and it is the perspective of the mother that portrays how she wants her daughter to be like, but it's not the daughter's actual identity. As you can see in the last scene, when Chang is wearing a red jacket, her color, daughter's color is red exactly like Boksoon's color. It's also seen in the side dishes that Jae always wants to eat versus what her mother always makes her eat. The color scheme is also seen through the green room and in the house plants as well. When you know the scene where a character is coming out to her mother, you will see Boksoon leave the room filled with plants and see town within the green room filled with plants. So I tried to draw contrast there as well. Also, in scenes when they're changing clothes and if Boksoon is wearing an all-red suit, you will see that Taylor is wearing socks that are a little bit red too, just to show that she harbors this sense of her that is represented by the color red,” Sung-Hyun said.
‘Kill Boksoon’ has received glaring reviews from critics as well as audiences and currently holds a rating of 92% on the review site Rotten Tomatoes.