If you just watched John Wick 4 and you’re looking for a fun, fast-paced action movie about a skilled assassin, then look no further than Kill Boksoon on Netflix.
This South Korean action-packed crime thriller was released by Netflix last week, and it quickly climbed its way into Netflix’s Top 10 trending movies list. Written and directed by Byun Sung-hyun, the movie stars Korean A-lister Jeon Do-yeon as a deadly hit woman named Boksoon. Boksoon is attempting to balance her dangerous job with raising a teenage daughter. Who says women can’t have it all?
It’s a fun watch, but it’s also quite long, at a whopping 137 minutes. It’s easy to get lost along the way when it comes to who is killing who, and why. If you’re confused, don’t worry. Decider is here to help.
Read on for a breakdown of the Kill Boksoon plot summary, the Kill Boksoon ending explained, the Kill Boksoon post-credits scene.
Gil Boksoon—also known by her nickname, “Kill Boksoon”—is a professional assassin who is very good at her job. She is currently under contract with MK Ent., a company that strives to treat its killers as professionals, provided that they agree to follow the rules. Boksoon goes way back with the head of the company, Chairman Cha Min-Kyu (Sol Kyung-gu). In fact, it’s later implied that the Chairman is the father of Boksoon’s teenage daughter. (More on that later.) But the Chairman’s younger sister, Cha Min-Hee (Esom), is also an MK executive, and she doesn’t like Boksoon at all.
Boksoon has a group of assassin friends, including Han Hee-sung (Koo Kyo-hwan), a fellow MK killer who is frustrated that he can’t make “A-level” at the company, despite his skill. He’s also sleeping with Boksoon, and is clearly more into her than she is into him. Boksoon has other things to worry about, like her teenage daughter, Gil Jae-yeong (Kim Si-a), who knows nothing about her mother’s real profession. Jae-yeong has her own problems: She’s secretly dating a girl at school, and dealing with harassment from a boy she keeps turning down. When that boy obtains private photos of Jae-yeong kissing her girlfriend, he threatens to reveal their secret to the school, unless Jae-yeong agrees to date him for a week. Jae-yeong opts to stab him in the neck instead. Like mother, like daughter!
Boksoon is distraught that her daughter may be expelled from private school, unless she tells the school why she attacked that boy. (He’s fine, don’t worry.) Boksoon tells MK that she doesn’t want to renew her contract when it expires. But her next job throws a wrench in her retirement plan: She is hired to kill the young son of a politician dealing with a college admissions scandal and make it look like a suicide. Just before doing the job, Boksoon receives an emotional call from her daughter. Instead of going through with the kill, Boksoon tells the Chairman she failed. He knows she is lying, but agrees to help her cover up her rule-breaking if she agrees to renew her contract. Boksoon’s condition? No one else can kill the college boy.
Boksoon and the eager intern who was helping her with the botched kill job meet up with Boksoon’s killer friends at their favorite restaurant. The assassins are celebrating Han Hee-sung’s promotion to A-level. How did he get that promotion? He killed the college boy that the Chairman swore no one would kill. It turns out that was an order from the Chairman’s sister. It further turns out that Han Hee-sung was doing unsanctioned jobs on the side and got caught, which is why he had to take the job. It’s also why he has to try to kill Boksoon, when the Chairman’s sister says that anyone who can kill Boksoon will get a prime job at MK.
Boksoon defeats all of her so-called friends, with the help of the intern. But now there are a bunch of dead assassins. And the assassin companies who want to know why their top killers are dead. The Chairman tells Boksoon he will take care of it. He secretly kills the intern, the only witness to the slaughter, even though Boksoon asked to keep her alive. Then he loses his cool at a meeting with the heads of other assassin companies, and kills everyone in the room. Meanwhile, Boksoon kills the Chairman’s sister, in revenge for ordering to have her killed. She leaves a bloody knife for the Chairman, and invitation to fight to the death. It’s not clear whether she wants revenge for the Chairman killing the intern, or if she simply thinks this is the only way out of this assassin life.
The Chairman discovers his sister’s dead body, and knows Boksoon killed her. He has a brief conversation with Boksoon’s daughter—who is also possibly his daughter—on the phone. Boksoon and the Chairman face off. Boksoon imagines the many outcomes in which the Chairman might kill her, but ultimately she wins the fight. Why? Because the Chairman is in love with Boksoon, which makes her his weakness.
As he is dying, the Chairman reveals one last gotcha: He is live streaming the fight, and he left an iPad with Boksoon’s daughter. She saw the entire thing, and now knows that her mother is a brutal killer. Boksoon drives home in tears, sure that her daughter will now see her as a monster. However, Jae-yeong acts friendly toward her mom when she gets home, and asks her to leave the door to her bedroom open. In other words, the daughter has left the door to the relationship with her mother open, implying that they will be more honest and open with each other here forward. It’s a metaphor, get it?
The movie leaves it open-ended, but I think the answer is yes. She saw the live stream, she knows her mother is a killer, and it doesn’t bother her. In fact, it empowers her. In the final scene of the movie, in a mid-credits scene, the daughter visits her private school, now wearing a varsity jacket. She has been expelled and has come to say goodbye to her ex-girlfriend. She hugs her ex in front of the entire class, and whispers a threat to kill her in her ear. Then she passes the boy she stabbed in the hallway, and taps her neck, to remind him of what she’s capable of doing. Then she smiles, and the movie ends.
In other words, the set-up is perfect for a killer mother-and-daughter team-up in Kill Boksoon 2. Let’s go!