THE OLD WOMAN WITH THE KNIFE - Mark Reviews Movies

The Old Woman with the Knife, Well Go USA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 15, 2025

Hornclaw (Hyeyoung Lee), the protagonist referred to in the title of The Old Woman with the Knife, has been killing people for decades. It was only a matter of time before one of those deaths would come back to her, and that seems to be where co-writer/director Min Kyu-dong's adaptation of Gu Byeong-mo's novel is heading. Someone from the professional killer's past wants her to pay for what she has done.

The plot of Min and Kim Dong-wan's screenplay, then, is pretty straightforward, even if Hornclaw's rival seems to have a very roundabout way of exacting revenge against this woman. That young man's plan is an elaborate game of earning trust, seemingly breaking it, and going through the whole process again and again, until we're really not sure if the guy actually wants her dead, would be fine with her knowing that he could kill her if he wants to, or has some other motive behind his scheme and behavior entirely.

That description may make it sound as if the story is uncertain of itself, but no, the film eventually reveals that it knows exactly what it's doing. The plotting isn't some kind of convoluted mess, with characters doing inconsistent things in order to drag out the whole affair and to provide the story with more action sequences. It's this way because these characters are more complex than they first appear, and by the end, the film's final notes are not satisfaction at witnessing a complicated puzzle finally assembled. They're instead of melancholy for how much of this could have been avoided if either of these foes had possessed different pasts, different families, and a different understanding of their own capacity to be better people.

However, Hornclaw didn't have the benefit of a comfortable, safe, or stable existence for the first couple decades of her life. When we first meet the character, she's a young woman (played by Shin Sia) in her 20s, who is walking down the street barefoot, wearing only a dress, and quite cold on a snowy night.

After collapsing to the ground, a car stops after the driver notices her lying there. He's Ryu (Kim Moo-yul), who runs an American-styled diner by day and has an entirely other business venture behind it all. The young Hornclaw, soon to be dubbed "Nails" after joining Ryu's secret organization, is attacked by a visiting American soldier, and in defending herself, the young woman kills this man. Ryu sees the aftermath and writes off the killing as a necessity. The soldier was, in his mind, nothing more than a "pest" in need of "extermination."

Most of the narrative is set 40 years later, after Nails has become Hornclaw, the killer has probably hundreds of notebooks and folders of her previous targets over those decades, and she is the star operative of the "pest control" group, now managed by Son (Kim Kang-woo). Hornclaw is starting to feel her age and the symptoms of getting older, mainly that her hands shake. When a doctor who handles the group's operatives suggests that she should slow down, Hornclaw points out that he should know too well what she'll do him if word of her condition reaches the boss.

The actual plot is a bit convoluted but not enough so to distract from these characters, as well as the air of pain and regret that begins to rise as we learn more about them. Hornclaw is severely hurt while on a job, and she manages to drive to a local veterinarian's office. She knows the vet, named Dr. Kang (Yeon Woo-jin), from when she brings an injured stray dog, which she ends up keeping, to his office.

Treating the unconscious Hornclaw, Kang learns of her trade, because she keeps so many weapons on her, and feeling indebted to the doctor, Hornclaw learns that the man is a widower, raising a daughter (played by Yoon Chae-na) on his own, after his wife died during surgery. The surgeon and hospital have no intention of taking responsibility or even apologizing. Kang isn't worried about his knowledge of Hornclaw's secret, because he believes her to be a good person beneath her job, but what he and she believe to be good actions are, of course, quite different.

The real core of the story, though, is the arrival of another killer named Bullfight (Kim Sung-cheol), a man who derives pleasure, not from killing, but from exacting pain from his targets. He's a new hire for the organization, but Bullfight clearly has an issue with Hornclaw, begins following her, and sees her connection to the veterinarian as a possible way to hurt her beyond any physical pain he could inflict.

On the surface, all of this appears to be a relatively simple tale of revenge, set within a grim, unforgiving world and against a series of well-orchestrated action scenes. In addition to getting to the cold but lonely heart of the character, Lee, whose own acting career in South Korea has spanned about the same amount of time as her character's criminal one, holds her own in these sequences, which mostly consist of close combat but also feature a rather dynamic climax in an abandoned, circular tower.

The more compelling point, however, is the sense of Hornclaw and Bullfight as people whose respective pasts and one shared moment in time, which the two perceived in completely distinct ways, have inevitably brought together. The Old Woman with the Knife is as much a study of sad, isolated characters being forced to confront their emotional shortcomings as it is a violent thriller.

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