Actress Jeon Do-yeon found it cathartic to pull off Kill Boksoon’s action scenes

LOS ANGELES – A beloved movie star in South Korea, Jeon Do-yeon is one of its most versatile dramatic actresses.

In 2007, she became the first Korean to win Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for the melodrama Secret Sunshine, in which she played a grieving widow. And her work runs the gamut from erotic drama The Housemaid (2010) to mystery thriller Beasts Clawing At Straws (2020).

But the 50-year-old stepped outside her comfort zone for the stylish new action flick Kill Boksoon, one of the buzziest Korean movies of the year and Jeon’s first big action role.

Premiering on Netflix on Friday (March 31), the movie casts her as Boksoon, a contract killer with a 100 per cent success rate. But she is struggling with her other job as the single mother to a 15-year-old girl (Kim Si-a).

On the verge of retiring so she can spend more time with her daughter, she breaks one of the rules of her profession and suddenly finds a target on her own back.

Speaking through interpreters at a virtual press event, the film’s writer-director Byun Sung-hyun says he has been a fan of Jeon’s work since her acting debut in the television series Our Paradise (1992), and wanted to write a unique film for her to star in.

“She’s been in so many great movies, most of them quite dark and deep. And because those were great movies, I didn’t want to fight them head-on – that’s why I chose an action film,” says the 42-year-old, who made the acclaimed crime film The Merciless (2017).

He then took inspiration from Jeon’s own life, and her dual roles as an A-list actress and the mother of a teen – her 14-year-old daughter with husband Kang Shi-kyu, a 58-year-old former racecar driver.

Jeon says this is why her character in the film felt familiar. “While I’m definitely not an assassin, I’m also leading kind of a double life as a mother and an actress.”

 

But making a big action film with elaborate stunts and set pieces proved to be a significant challenge for both Byun and Jeon.

As she approached her action scenes, she admits she was “quite scared and unsure – but I kept telling myself that I have to pull it off no matter what”.

All the fight scenes were tough, but the trickiest were the ones where Boksoon wields a large sword.

“It’s very long and it’s hard to fathom how far it’ll reach, so I was really scared to hurt someone. It was the most threatening weapon to work with,” says the star.

But she eventually came to relish the long takes that Byun preferred for those moments in the film.

“While it was scary, it was cathartic when I finished a scene. So I had a lot of different feelings swirling inside me,” she says.

Byun, however, felt bad when he saw how exhausted his cast was.

“I actually thought of giving up midway because I could see it was so physically challenging for the actors.

“I would stop them and say, ‘I will make something out of this’, but the actors said, ‘Let’s try just one more time’. So I felt an immense amount of gratitude, but I did feel very bad looking at them struggling.”

And Byun says he and his director of photography subsequently agreed that they will not do any more action-packed films.

But the film-maker and his leading lady have been gratified by the reaction to Kill Boksoon so far, especially after it was invited to premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2023.

Byun says: “I did not see that coming – I thought this film wasn’t the type to be invited to Berlin because it is a genre movie.”

Jeon was touched by the positive reception the film received there.

“It was my first time (at the festival) and I, too, was curious whether Kill Boksoon would be the type of movie Berlin would love.

“But when I watched the screening, I was so moved. I can’t believe that I was there for that. It was so surreal,” she says.

Kill Boksoon premieres on Netflix on Friday.