Movie review - The Old Woman with the Knife

The Old Woman with the Knife *** (out of 5) The title may read like it belongs on some slasher flick about a hag in the boonies who fillets innocent campers; or runs a restaurant “serving” people in both senses of that verb. But it tops a subtitled Korean martial arts film with an engagingly unique protagonist. Lately, we’ve seen a burgeoning of hot, deadly female protagonists and villains in the genre from just about every country cranking them out. This time we get a dowdy career assassin with the code name of Hornclaw (Lee Hye-yeong) who appears as one who should be pushing her possessions in a rusty shopping cart to her cardboard abode in the shadow of an overpass. The actress is younger and more attractive than she looks in this frumped-up role, in which she could pass for Maggie Q’s impoverished granny.

The plot unfolds in a somewhat scattered array of current action and flashbacks to stages of the lousy childhood that shaped her vocation and skills. She’s now in the sunset years as the doyen of an association of assassins who try to take out the worst of the worst, not just target anyone for a price. Differences arise in the organization about which contracts to accept, putting her on the outs with its younger leadership. This rift is heightened by the bosses hiring a new kid they call Bullfight (Kim Sung-cheol) who is gleefully sadistic as he makes his victims suffer a lot more than a job requires. He and Hornclaw are at odds for reasons that unfold throughout.

Performances from the two leads are exceptional in their skill, contrast and dramatic tension between them. Hornclaw is world-weary and principled; Bullfight relishes the game of killing in the most painful, protracted ways, creating a memorably odious persona in the process. Action sequences are first-rate, frequent and often quite grisly, in a course of events that is suitably suspenseful. The downside of the production, directed and co-written by Kyu-dong Min, is the large number and distribution of flashbacks, making it harder to distinguish time periods as it skips among them. A more linear telling of the tale would have been easier to follow.

This film will be appreciated most by action fans with a high tolerance for the gory side of the genre. It’s another of the many fine Korena exports in this vein I’ve covered in the last few years. Most of the fights are conducted with fists, feet, pipes and blades, entailing very little gunplay. That allows the stunt cast to shine more brightly than when bullets are the main currency for the mayhem. If you’re ready to pay a bit more attention than usual to keep the timelines straight, you’ll be rewarded for the effort.

(The Old Woman with the Knife, in Korean with subtitles, opens in U.S. and Canadian theaters 5/16/25)