Assassins. (12.)
Directed by Ryan White.
Featuring Siti Aisyah, Doan Thi Thong, Anna Fifield, Hadi Azmi. Partly subtitled. Available on VOD from January 29th. 105 mins.
Kim Jong-nam, the overlooked older half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un cut a striking figure during his latter years. Exiled from the homeland for trying to visit Disneyland in Tokyo, he shuffled around Macao looking like a scruffbag bachelor uncle, one who after early promise had ended up in a dead-end accountancy position and arrives at family occasions with a plastic bag of Lidl booze. He only gets invited as a cautionary example to the kids: he could've been the dictator of a totalitarian state, now look at him.
Being bumped off for letting yourself go a bit is certainly extreme but when you are third generation of a divine dynasty descended directly from Mt Paektu, the mythic birthplace of all Koreans, walking about unshaven with your shirt untucked could be seen as representing a threat to the regime. Even so, he surely deserved a more dignified assassination than having two young women rub the nerve agent VX into his eyes, in the Kuala Lumpur airport, believing it to be part of a hidden camera prank.
If you had to choose a news story of the last decade to have a full-length documentary about, his brazen and bizarre murder would surely be near the top. Well, here it is and it's all you could hope it would be.
Getting the great story is not the same as telling the great story but White's film does an exemplary job. It's thorough and clear, gets a range of opinions and insights and explores every aspect of the story from the human interest angle to the geo-political ramifications. It also has access to the defence teams of the two accused women: Indonesian Siti and Vietnamese Doan, as they try to save them from a mandatory death sentence. It goes through the process where their North Korean handlers, posing as makers of prank videos for the Japanese market, got them to rub baby oil in the faces of unsuspecting businessmen.
Only afterwards did I have some misgivings about the film's total commitment to the slant that the pair were entirely duped. Clearly, these weren't cold-blooded killers but you'd like to find out more about why they were so concerned about not touching anything after the prank and went straight to the airport bathroom to wash their hands. Even more so, what is up with the Japanese sense of humour?
Directed by Ryan White.
Featuring Siti Aisyah, Doan Thi Thong, Anna Fifield, Hadi Azmi. Partly subtitled. Available on VOD from January 29th. 105 mins.
Kim Jong-nam, the overlooked older half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un cut a striking figure during his latter years. Exiled from the homeland for trying to visit Disneyland in Tokyo, he shuffled around Macao looking like a scruffbag bachelor uncle, one who after early promise had ended up in a dead-end accountancy position and arrives at family occasions with a plastic bag of Lidl booze. He only gets invited as a cautionary example to the kids: he could've been the dictator of a totalitarian state, now look at him.
Being bumped off for letting yourself go a bit is certainly extreme but when you are third generation of a divine dynasty descended directly from Mt Paektu, the mythic birthplace of all Koreans, walking about unshaven with your shirt untucked could be seen as representing a threat to the regime. Even so, he surely deserved a more dignified assassination than having two young women rub the nerve agent VX into his eyes, in the Kuala Lumpur airport, believing it to be part of a hidden camera prank.
If you had to choose a news story of the last decade to have a full-length documentary about, his brazen and bizarre murder would surely be near the top. Well, here it is and it's all you could hope it would be.
Getting the great story is not the same as telling the great story but White's film does an exemplary job. It's thorough and clear, gets a range of opinions and insights and explores every aspect of the story from the human interest angle to the geo-political ramifications. It also has access to the defence teams of the two accused women: Indonesian Siti and Vietnamese Doan, as they try to save them from a mandatory death sentence. It goes through the process where their North Korean handlers, posing as makers of prank videos for the Japanese market, got them to rub baby oil in the faces of unsuspecting businessmen.
Only afterwards did I have some misgivings about the film's total commitment to the slant that the pair were entirely duped. Clearly, these weren't cold-blooded killers but you'd like to find out more about why they were so concerned about not touching anything after the prank and went straight to the airport bathroom to wash their hands. Even more so, what is up with the Japanese sense of humour?
