Netflix’s Kill Boksoon star Jeon Do-yeon on ‘huge pressure’ of carrying the action-thriller, in which she plays a mother who’s an asssassin

In the Netflix movie Kill Boksoon, Jeon Do-yeon, who plays Gil Boksoon, a top assassin for the shadowy MK organisation, struggles to connect with her teenaged daughter, Jae. It turns out Boksoon is a better killer than parent. “Well, what is a good parent?” Jeon ponders during an interview at the recent Berlin International Film Festival, where the world premiere of her film took place. “Sometimes we can’t really judge what’s good or bad. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m right. Being a mother is not an easy task.” Jeon was a friendly presence in Berlin, waving to crowds and joking through a televised press conference. But her steely resolve is never far from the surface. Publicists tried to rush her along the red carpet, but she insisted on taking selfies with fans. She is all smiles for her interview, alongside writer and director Byun Sung-hyun, in a conference room at Berlin’s Hotel de Rome. A fixture in Korean cinema and TV since the 1990s, Jeon won the best actress award at Cannes for Secret Sunshine in 2007. She has played a wide range of roles, but never a cold-blooded killer. “Boksoon – her life and story – is not that different from my actual life,” she says. “It’s just the occupation that’s different. Mind you, I’ve never killed anybody.” Kill Boksoon: Jeon Do-yeon plays assassin in visceral Korean thriller Byun wrote the script for Jeon, and developed Boksoon’s character by studying the star at home with her daughter. “I would watch them play cards, board games,” he recalls. “I saw them at their best, and also when there was a little conflict between them.” The team spent hours brainstorming dialogue, Jeon improvising Boksoon as a mother. “She came up with some amazing lines with her daughter that ended up in the final version,” Byun says. This is the first action film for the two and, despite careful planning, there were some mishaps. “We went through intensive training,” Jeon says. “You try to act out scenes with your opponent beforehand. But on set, when we go really deep into emotions, sometimes the choreographed sequences can go a little off. You are bound to get hurt sometimes. “I was especially cautious because we are actors, not stunt professionals.” “It was challenging,” Byun says. “I wanted the action to look more like a graphic novel than too grounded or real. For the last sequence, I must have changed the storyboards seven or eight times to get exactly what we wanted.” One accident during a stunt sequence resulted in Jeon having to go to hospital, which briefly brought filming to a halt. “Having to carry an action film was definitely a huge amount of pressure,” Jeon says. “Every time I felt a bit insecure, including things like my injury, I constantly told myself I will not give up. I wanted to challenge people who might think, ‘Hey, I don’t think she’s going to do a good job.’ I wanted to challenge myself as well.” “This amazing actress is undoubtedly the best we have in Korea,” Byun says. “She is famous for being able to portray the dark side of humanity. Until now her characters were either sacrificed or left in a very destitute place. But now she is a killer. “I believe she is at the top of her game. “She’s like the top predator. I wanted to capture that. What I didn’t want was to have a female character who was as tough and rugged as the males.” The 10 best films from Korean cinema’s best year – 2003, the year of Oldboy Byun calls himself “a son of Korean films of the 2000s”, which is when he attended film school. “If you look at the casts in my movies, there are always actors from that era: Sul Kyung-gu, who plays the MK chairman, and of course Jeon.” The MK organisation in Kill Boksoon mirrors Korean society at large, with resentment between classes and unfair contracts. “In Korea, it’s not always how good you are at something,” Byun says. “That doesn’t guarantee you will be recognised in life. No, the rich get richer, and others never get the chance. Think about how a large conglomerate brings down smaller companies.” The fights in Kill Boksoon become more intimate and brutal as the story unfolds, requiring collaboration between the art director, cinematographer, and action choreographer. “Everything was calculated in detail,” Byun says. “Directors often shoot a master – in other words, film the whole scene in one take. I didn’t use a master shot once. Instead, I had visual cues. “For example, when Jeon is being a mother, you see the right side of her face. When she’s a killer, the left side.” For all its slayings and betrayals, at its heart Kill Boksoon is a story about people – a mother and daughter, a mentor and student, colleagues and lovers. Byun’s favourite scene finds Boksoon and her daughter Jae (Kim Si-a) seated on a living room couch, their backs to each other. The camera moves in on them slowly, as if trying to bring them together. The director says he wanted to give Boksoon some hope of success at being a mother. Faced with a problem, like finding cigarettes in Jae’s possession, she imagines how different solutions will play out. If being strict won’t stop Jae from smoking, maybe being nice will. “Boksoon learned as a killer to think of all possibilities in a situation,” Byun says. “It’s something she learned from Cha Min-kyu, the MK chairman. “In that scene with her daughter, she goes with her first choice and fails. In the second version, she fails once again. As we look at her in close-up, you hear the sound of a door closing. I included the sound of a slashing sword to show that she has failed as a mother – in fact, died, in a way.” “I wouldn’t say she’s a ‘bad’ mother,” Jeon says with a laugh. “I think she’s a mother who’s trying but might be a little bit clumsy.” Kill Boksoon will start streaming on Netflix on March 31. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook