I couldn’t shake the feeling watching this film that there was something that was missing. With foreign movies, it is hard to tell if you’re watching a remake or sequel to something that already exists.
There wasn’t much information about ‘The Killer: A Girl Who Deserves to Die’ before I saw the movie. While it wasn’t based on a movie, it is based on a popular book in South Korea. Stories about retired serial killers have become very popular after the age of John Wick. The classic story of a man who just wants to be left alone and the antagonist is that simply doesn’t want to do it. What makes this story any different than the others? This time around, we have a young teenage girl who’s caught up in the middle of a much bigger end game.
‘The Killer: A Girl Who Deserves to Die’ is the story of a hit man named Ui-gang (Jang Hyuk) who has decided to retire and live a peaceful life with his wife. He has a nice house and all the money he needs, but one day his wife takes a trip to Jeju Island and leaves him with a request. Her companion on the trip has a 17-year-old daughter Yoon-ji (Lee Seo-young) who will be left alone during their three-week vacation.
Ui-gang reluctantly agrees to look after Yoon-ji and make sure she doesn’t get into trouble. But Yoon-ji makes some poor choices and before she realizes it, she finds herself in a situation far more dangerous than she ever imagined. But just as Yoon-ji is in over her head, her captors too will find themselves with more than they can handle when Ui-gang shows up to take her home.
One thing I have to give credit for, Jang Hyuk despite being in his mid-40s, does all his own stunts in this movie and some of those stunts are more painful than others as shown in the end credits of the movie. The film is very well choreographed. The cameramen, the stunt actors, and the stunt choreographers work in unison to go over the fine details of each scene that they perform in the movie. Like many films in this genre, the action in this movie is absolutely brutal. A lot of blood and headshots are in this film so it’s probably not the best movie to take your small children to go see.
Story-wise, the film is about a group of guys who picked the worst possible person to mess with, A stone-cold killer with no remorse or no hesitation. Not much is explained about our protagonist’s background leading up to the film but one thing is made perfectly clear throughout the movie: He is a well-connected and very dangerous individual.
Some of the cons about the movie include the fact that there aren’t very many appealing villains throughout the film. Our hero mows down an endless supply of cannon fodder with ease. Whenever the film introduces a villain that actually has a bit of character, they don’t stick around for very long. You also have the trope of characters in the movie shooting dozens of bullets on a handgun over and over without needing to reload.
The Killer: A Girl Who Deserves to Die is very much a “show but don’t tell” movie. The action matters far more in this film than characters or storylines, But the film is enjoyable enough as an action movie for fans of the genre will still get their fix at the end of the day. When it comes to men who just want to be left alone, you’re better off just leaving them alone.
3.5/5
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