Kill Boksoon is an action film that follows Gil Bok-soon, a legendary assassin who struggles to balance her life of killing with taking care of her daughter. It is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
The film starts with Bok-soon approaching a target; the yakuza Oda Shinichiro. She had planned to kill him while he was off-guard, but something changed her mind.
While she was watching the news with her daughter, Gil Jae-yeong, the case of Senator Oh Jeong-sik fraudulently getting his son admitted to a music school came up.
After Jae-yeong complained about this being unfair, Bok-soon also decided to fight fairly. She gives Oda a katana, while she uses an axe she bought on the internet.
Although the fight is fairly even, Oda eventually gets the better of her. Bok-soon can predict how the fight will go, and that she will lose.
To survive, she decides to change her weapon and uses a gun to just shoot him instead, ultimately deciding not to fight fair.
Bok-soon is employed as a contract killer under MK, a company run by chairman Cha Min-kyu. When his sister and director of MK, Cha Min-hee, complains about Bok-soon using a gun to kill the target, he lets it slide.
She criticises him for always being so weak in handling Bok-soon. After the incident, Bok-soon meets her friends who are employed by other companies.
They ask her about the yakuza, and she tells them he was tough to kill. They also marvel at how much money she earns with MK, while they earn considerably less for missions assigned by their companies, which they call ‘shows’.
The reason for this is that Min-kyu had established rules seven years ago that prevent killing if it wasn’t assigned by their own company, stopping the employees from taking up rogue tasks.
The three rules include: not killing a minor, only taking up shows assigned by their company, and always attempting shows assigned by their company.
Han Hee-seong, another employee of MK, complains about how he is never assigned rank A in the company like Bok-soon. Hee-seong was actually taught by her and she is his mentor.
Meanwhile, Jae-yeong is shown to be interested in girls and is with So-ra. The two are bullied by boys in their school.
When Bok-soon returns to office, Min-hee introduces her to the new intern: Kim Yeong-ji, a young girl she claims will be as good as Bok-soon in the future.
The two spar, and while Bok-soon gets the better of her easily, she clearly displays enough potential.
Min-kyu questions Bok-soon about her doubts about renewing her contract with the company. She cites her struggle with raising her daughter as the reason.
He also gives her two options for the next mission: one domestic and one in Russia. She takes the domestic, but has concerns when the target turns out to be a young man, but since he’s not a minor she has to accept. Min-kyu ends up taking the Russia mission himself.
Bok-soon is called to school after Jae-Yeong stabs a boy with scissors. The boy’s mother is relentless in her insulting and Jae-Yeong has just two weeks to prove a reason or she will be expelled.
Meanwhile, all the contract-killing companies notice that someone has been going rogue and killing without being assigned a show. They vow to weed out the culprit.
Bok-soon is accompanied by Yeong-ji on the domestic mission but stops when she reads the suicide note. The target is Senator Oh Jeong-sik’s son. His own father had hired assassins to kill his son to gain sympathy.
Min-kyu calls her and realises she did not go ahead with the mission. While killing his targets in Russia, he talks to her on phone.
She convinces him to let this slide by assuring him she will sign the contract, but only if nobody else takes up this mission either. He accepts.
He also recalls the day he met Bok-soon. He had been sent to kill his father, who was an officer. Bok-soon saw this, and when he threatened to kill her, she just went ahead and killed her father on her own.
Her father had been abusive towards her. Killing him made her smile with happiness, and that is how he ended up recruiting her.
Min-hee criticises him for being soft again and decides to take matters into her own hand. She assigns Hee-seong the mission of killing the senator’s son despite Bok-soon’s request.
When she meets her assassin friends again, they all attack her along with Hee-seong, instructed to do so by Min-hee.
She had figured out that Hee-seong was the rogue killer and used this information to blackmail him into taking up that mission and betraying Bok-soon.
She only survives because Yeong-ji decides to fight on her side. The two end up killing all of them, including Hee-seong, who meant so much to her.
Min-kyu finds out and is about to kill Bok-soon when Yeong-ji tells him the entire truth.
Bok-soon contemplates fighting him but knows full well that she is no match for the chairman. She agrees to sign a contract with him since that is the only way to protect her after she killed that many employees of other companies.
Kill Boksoon ending explained in detail:
Why did Min-kyu kill Yeong-ji?
After the whole incident, Min-kyu, as the chairman of MK, addresses all other heads of the companies regarding what happened.
He claims that Hee-seong was the rogue and they decided to assign the mission to kill him to Bok-soon, but he resisted.
All of his assassin friends joined him in fighting Bok-soon, which is why each one of them ended up dying. It wasn’t her fault.
Sergeant Shin, head of an affiliate company, rebels against Min-kyu and asks him to kill himself because Hee-seong broke a rule.
Min-kyu is furious and claims he, himself, is the ultimate rule and brutally murders Shin for drawing a weapon during a meeting, declaring that this is a new rule he made.
Is Min-hee dead?
Director Min-hee takes Bok-soon to her office and gives her the contract, stating that they will both be protected under MK.
However, she reveals to Bok-soon that after she left, Min-kyu murdered Yeong-ji as she was the witness to what happened.
Bok-soon is furious at this and quickly kills Min-hee. She leaves a bloody pen for Min-kyu, declaring a final fight between them.
The assassins had long used a bloody knife as a declaration for a fight to death between two individuals. Bok-soon killed Min-hee with a pen and presented that instead.
What happens in the final battle between Bok-soon and Min-kyu?
Bok-soon and Jae-yeong finally bond when the latter tells her that So-ra left her and claimed not to be a lesbian. Her mother consoles her by saying she is lying and trying to protect herself.
Jae-yeong reveals she had found a fun and a fake passport in Bok-soon’s bag and assumed she works for the CIA. She plays along with this, not wanting her daughter to know the truth.
Bok-soon arrives for her final fight with Min-kyu. When she exits the elevator, he welcomes her with a string of bullets, but misses intentionally.
Bok-soon realises that he used two hands for shooting, which means his right hand is injured. But her predictions show the absolute worst outcome.
No matter what she does next, Min-kyu will always end up killing her. He gloats about this, telling her no injury can be his weakness.
She turns the tables by telling him she knows his true weakness; her. When she asks when this happened, a flashback shows Min-kyu has been in love with her from the moment she smiled after killing her father.
She uses this moment to catch him off guard and deliver the final blow, winning their battle. But Min-kyu reveals he made this choice.
His world would be hell without him in it, but he wants to make her life more hellish than even that. He explains his plan.
Does Jae-yeong know the truth about Bok-soon?
Min-kyu had sent Jae-yeong a screen that broadcasted the entire incident, finally showing her daughter what Bok-soon’s profession is.
Bok-soon cannot believe this. When she reaches home, Jae-yeong feigns ignorance but she has seen everything and only chooses not to tell her mother.
Later, she goes back to her school to say goodbye to So-Ra and whispers in her ear that she originally came to either kiss or kill her.
She leaves and taunts the boy she had stabbed. Jae-yeong has embraced her true personality, which is the spitting image of her mother.
As the film ends, she gives a smile which is reminiscent of the one that Bok-soon had after killing her father years ago.
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