‘The Old Woman With The Knife’ review: Bloody Korean actioner centres around an older assassin

Dir: Min Kyu-dong. South Korea. 2025. 131mins

Hornclaw (Hyeyoung Lee), a veteran assassin in her mid-sixties, is a legend; she is the most icily efficient operative in her organisation (a kind of ethical murder service, they describe themselves as “pest control”.) But there are indications that she might be going soft: her killing hand is not as firm as it used to be. And she has just adopted a bedraggled senior rescue dog. But when a ruthless professional killer with an agenda joins her organisation, Hornclaw realises that this is no time to be losing her edge. There’s plenty that is familiar in this extravagantly bloody action picture. But Lee is terrifyingly effective in the role, and the fight sequences are impressively visceral.

Lee is terrifyingly effective in the role

It’s a striking departure for Lee, who is perhaps best known as one of Hong Sang-soo’s regular collaborators. She appeared in Hong’s recent pictures, including A Traveller’s Needs and In Front Of Your Face, winning several acting prizes for the latter. Director Min Kyu-dong, whose wide-ranging CV includes romantic comedies (All For Love, All About My Wife), horror (the Horror Stories anthologies) and sci-fi (The Prayer), tackles the fight sequences with relish. While the film could do with having some of the surplus expositional flab cleavered off, it is – thanks to the pensionable badass protagonist – distinctive enough to catch the eye of specialist distributors and festivals looking for genre titles for late-night slots.

Hornclaw – the name makes her sound like a rare Pokemon, but she chose it herself after single-handedly slaughtering an entire warehouse full of bad guys – lives for her work. She has no friends (or at least none that she wouldn’t kill if necessary), no hobbies, no attachments that might get in the way of her ability to do the job. And it’s a job that she is uniquely well-equipped to perform. She can kick a man across a room, and what she lacks in muscle and bone density she makes up for with cunning. Plus, the old woman is seriously kitted out. In addition to the knife mentioned in the title, she has a selection of firearms hidden in her kimchi jars, a poison-tipped spike and some kind of ceremonial gouging prong that she keeps for special occasions.

Perhaps concerned that a superannuated, steely-faced female killer might not be a particularly sympathetic character, the film goes heavy on scene-setting flashbacks establishing her miserable childhood, her first kill (self-defence, perpetrated on a violent, would-be rapist) and her strict(ish) moral code of killing only those who deserve to die. The film rather ties itself in knots when it comes to the justification of Hornclaw’s career choices, when in fact what is interesting about the character is not her initial victimhood, but the clinical, cold-blooded professionalism that makes her the very best at what she does.

Her dog is no weakness, either. She barely remembers to feed poor, unfortunately-named Braveheart. But when a hit on a former colleague gets messy, she is sewn back together by Dr Kang, (Yeon Woo-jin), a saintly widowed vet who lost his wife to medical malpractice at a hospital and who has an irrepressibly perky daughter. Her guard lowered by pain medication, Hornclaw is disarmed by the relentless niceness of Kang and his kid. Which makes them an obvious target for anyone wishing harm upon Hornclaw (a not inconsiderable list).

The film is a curious blend of bruising action (which works well) and sentimental padding (which is less successful). Thes core, a histrionic orchestral onslaught, is particularly overbearing. But audiences for a film titled The Old Woman With The Knife will be mainly concerned with the quality and inventiveness of the fight sequences. And on that level, the picture doesn’t disappoint. Hornclaw’s murder wardrobe is both impressively chic and practical – the leather trench, bucket hat combo is a particular triumph. And of the action set pieces, a frenzy of slaughtering in a derelict amusement park is a stand out.