YNOT at the Movies

Director Min Kyu-dong's action thriller "The Old Woman with the Knife" (파과 | South Korea 2025 | in Korean | 125 min.) is a ferocious, enigmatic character study. It's adapted from Gu Byeong-mo's bestselling novel, the film centers on Hornclaw (Lee Hye-young), a contract killer in her sixties who has spent over four decades working for the Shinseong Agency—a shadowy organization that eliminates people deemed "pests" under the clinical term "disinfection." Known in the underworld as the "Godmother," Hornclaw is both feared and quietly pushed aside, as age becomes a liability in a profession built on invisibility and control.

Hornclaw's rigid, solitary life begins to shift after she's injured on the job and receives help from a kind-hearted veterinarian, Dr. Kang (Yeon Woo-jin). As this unwanted connection threatens her long-held detachment, another figure enters her orbit: a younger assassin known as Bullfight (Kim Sung-cheol), who approaches her not as a rival, but with an unsettling familiarity. As Hornclaw continues to carry out assignments for an agency that now questions her relevance, she finds herself caught in a quiet but tightening web of emotional disturbance, moral ambiguity, and long-buried history. Violence accumulates at the edges, but what drives the tension is something more internal—an erosion of distance between Hornclaw and everything she once kept at arm's length.

Lee Hye-young delivers a performance of extraordinary control, inhabiting Hornclaw with deliberate movements and unreadable expressions. Her violence is quick, silent, and precise—a discipline born of survival. Bullfight, by contrast, fights with volatility and emotion, his aggression shaped by something unresolved. Director Min Kyu-dong contrasts these modes with care—ice against fire, efficiency against eruption. The action, though occasionally excessive, remains grounded in character.

The film touches on a deeper social reality: while men in their sixties are often seen as seasoned, women are quickly dismissed as "old." Hornclaw is never framed as fragile, but her anger at being quietly erased simmers beneath every exchange. The world no longer knows what to do with her, and underestimates her at its peril.

Yeon Woo-jin brings quiet warmth as Dr. Kang, whose act of care complicates Hornclaw's emotional distance. Kim Mu-yeol plays Ryu, the founder of the Shinseong Agency and Hornclaw's mentor, with the cold authority of someone who builds killers and discards them without sentiment.

"The Old Woman with the Knife" doesn't seek resolution or redemption. It observes what happens when usefulness expires—and what it means to persist anyway. Hornclaw is not softened by the film. She is sharpened, and left unexplained. The film doesn't translate her. It simply watches her remain—sharp, unreadable, and very much alive.

"The Old Woman with the Knife" opens in theaters on Friday, May 16, 2025.