South Korean film “The Old Woman with the Knife” looks promising at first but ends up being quite bland and middling to my disappointment. While it is carried to the end by the strong performance from its lead actress at least, the movie is also often hampered by a number of glaring flaws including blatant plot contrivance and clumsy melodrama, and I found myself caring less and less about the story and characters especially during its second half.
The story mainly revolves around an old but lethal lady called “Hornclaw” (Lee Hye-young), who has worked as a professional killer for one clandestine agency. Since she was saved and then trained by the founder of this agency around 50 years ago, she has killed a lot of bad people who deserved to be eliminated for good reasons in the viewpoint of her and her agency, and the opening scene shows how she deftly and quietly handles her latest job.
However, it also turns out that things have not been that good for Hornclaw. Although she has tried to keep her body fit and healthy as much as possible, she is frequently reminded of how her aging body becomes more fragile and unreliable day by day. While she is still respected as the godmother of the agency, she does not like how the current leader of the agency, who is incidentally her junior, has managed their agency, and he does not like her that much either.
As a matter of fact, he has been looking for any new employee willing to kill for the agency, and we are soon introduced to a lad nicknamed “Bullfight” (Kim Sung-cheol). After getting rid of a bunch of gangs involved with human organ trafficking. Bullfight is recruited by the agency for his considerable killing skills, but Hornclaw is not particularly impressed a lot, and she surely shows him that she is not someone he can easily mess with.
Meanwhile, Hornclaw is ordered to take care of the problematic aftermath of one simple task which became a bit messier than expected. At first, all she will have to do is killing a certain figure who was one of her colleagues, but she gets seriously injured in the end, and then she finds herself helped a lot by a kind local veterinarian she previously met for the matter of an injured stray dog. Even after learning more about who she is, this decent dude still wants to help her more, and, what do you know, she finds herself caring about him more than expected, even though she is supposed to eliminate him for avoiding any possible loose end.
It is not much of a spoiler to tell you that our killer lady subsequently finds herself in a very tricky situation due to her friendship with her unlikely friend. After watching over what is going on between them, Bullfight embarks on cornering Hornclaw in one way or another, and, despite her frequently failing physical status, she must fight against his nasty tactics for protecting her friend and his dear little daughter.
This surely looks like a familiar but solid ground for more thrill and action, but the movie often interrupts its narrative flow with unnecessary flashback scenes and several contrived plot turns. In case of a number of flashback scenes between Hornclaw and her mentor, they only add more melodrama to the story without much character development, and they also often disrupt the narrative momentum of the story. Furthermore, the movie becomes all the more melodramatic as the hidden personal connection between Hornclaw and Bullfight is revealed later in the story, but this does not work as well as intended mainly because of weak characterization. While he is supposed to be the antagonist in the story, Bullfight is merely unpleasant and vicious without much human depth or personality, and we accordingly do not care a lot about his personal motive.
In case of several action scenes in the film, they are fairly competent on the whole, but they did not engage me enough due to being mainly driven by plot necessity instead of characters. The climactic action sequence unfolded at a certain abandoned place is overlong and heavy-handed in my humble opinion, and it eventually becomes more tedious as mired in more melodrama without generating any emotional effect on us.
Nevertheless, I admire the committed acting of Lee Hye-young, who has been mainly known for her appearances in several recent works of Hong Sang-soo. Here in this movie, she looks and feels completely different as filling her role with steely will and determination, and she is also believable whenever she has to throw herself into a lot of action as demanded.
In contrast, several supporting performers around them are wasted due to their under-developed roles. While Shin Si-ah manages to shine as young Hornclaw during several flashback scenes, Kim Sung-cheol is unfortunately often pushed into Overacting 101, and Yeon Woo-jin does not have much to do except looking nice and generous. In fact, the best supporting performer in the movie is that rescued stray dog, which adorably steals the show whenever it appears on the screen.
Directed by Min Kyu-dong, who previously directed “Herstory” (2018), “The Old Woman with the Knife” is incidentally based on the novel of the same name by Gu Byeong-mo, whose English translation version has been already available in US. I have not read the novel yet, but now I wonder more whether the novel is better than its movie version, and I am certainly willing to check it out as soon as possible.
