'The Old Woman With the Knife' Review: Revenge Is Served With a Twist in This Assassin Adventure

When it comes to the world of underground agencies hiring out assassins, the John Wick franchise essentially laid out the rules we have come to expect from that subset of films. We've seen the format of the "one last job" that ends up becoming far more complicated, usually due to a blast from the past, where the protagonist, reaching retirement age, has to prove they're the best in the game one last time. But in The Old Woman With the Knife, the legendary Hornclaw (Lee Hye-young) is still very much in the game and has no intentions of retiring when she faces off against a mysterious person from her past. The South Korean action-adventure film, directed by Min Kyu-dong and based on a novel of the same name by Gu Byeong-mo, nails all the assassin and revenge movie tropes in the head but cleverly twists them in unexpected ways, giving us a fresh and merciless take on the genre.