본투킬 (Born To Kill)

“본투킬” (Born to Kill) starts with a bang: man on a motorcycle, sleazy mob boss in a car feeling up a protesting girl – one minute later – smashed window, knife to the boss’ face and his eyeball neatly falling onto the screaming girl’s dress. Born to Kill means business from the very beginning.

The mysterious man on the bike, Gil, played by 정우성 (Jung Woo-sung) lives in his apartment with a sick little monkey named Chi-Chi, a fridge full of money, and an addiction to Marlboro Reds. He finds his neighbour Su-ha, played by 심은하 (Shim Eun-ha), collapsed on the ground outside their apartment building and takes her to his home to let her sober up. Su-ha is a wanna-be singer, stuck in a dead end bar job, she starts trying to build a relationship with Gil and once she discovers that his fridge is filled with money, then she does her best to take it off him. Gil, being a very socially inept assassin, follows her lead without complaint. Su-ha does her best to corrupt him and spend his money.

One day Su-ha disappears with Gil’s money and uses it to start her singing career, however when things go pear-shaped he is there to protect her. As all this is going on the gang bosses of Seoul are fighting between themselves and Gil is just a pawn in their ultra-violent chess game. He’s sent in to kill off a number of gangsters with his trusty knife, until he meets a victim who seems to recognize him….

Filled with a lot of slow motion  and middle aged gangsters shouting at each other, “Born To Kill” does become tedious at points, but the dysfunctional relationship between Gil and Su-ha is enough to keep the viewer interested. My heart also went out to poor little banana-loving Chi-Chi, the monkey gets mere seconds of screen time, but his demise is the saddest of all.

The action scenes of the film are designed to shock. The director loves knives and spends much of the film devoting long lingering close ups to the many stabbings that occur, unfortunately this love for his prop means that on one occasion when the knife is left in a body you can see it wobbling around, betraying its rubbery origins.

The subtitles for this dvd may well have been done by Gil’s little monkey, with hundreds of errors and odd grammatical quirks. The picture quality of the dvd is just as bad and looks as if it has been converted from a much watched video tape.

“Born to Kill” was released in 1996 and its two leads went on to many bigger and better projects. Jung Woo-sung has starred in “Sad Movie”, “Mutt-boy”, “Daisy”, “Musa the Warrior” and last year’s smash hit “The Good, The Bad and The Weird”. Shim Eun-ha went on to appear in “Interview”, “Tell Me Something”, “Art Museum By The Zoo” and the very moving “Christmas in August”. This may not be their best film, but we get glimpses of the actors that they were to become. They are the reason to watch this film, but patience is needed to get through the terrible subtitling and the slow paced 109 minutes of screen time. Fortunately a trip to Yongsan, could mean that you can find this cheeky little gangster flick at the low, low price of 2,500 won.

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