One of the surprises of getting old is that you get hit with ailments for which you hadn't planned. For me, it's been creaky knee joints, acidic reflux, and high cholesterol. For Hornclaw (Lee Hye-yeong), the aging assassin in The Old Woman with the Knife, it's waning endurance, a shaky hand, and slower reflexes. I can do stretches, eat dinner earlier, and take a nightly dose of Atorvastatin. She's going to have to perservere with her grueling physical regimen and find a kind, widowed veterinarian (Nam Myung-ryul) to stitch her up should "accidents" occur. Gone are those days in which her younger self (Shin Si-ah) could singlehandedly take out 28 men with a knife. Now she's having to resort to guns and a Spiderman-style rope to eliminate a gang of enemies who lack her timetested expertise.
And so, the illusion continues. We can do anything we used to be able to do, if we try a little harder. In fact, we can even adopt a stray dog named Braveheart and forge new allegiances with the "pest control" agency's office manager Cho-yeop (Ok Ja-yeon) who's modeled her look after Bettie Page, if we're inclined as well. But we'll also have to confront our messy past. (Career choices do make a difference!) In Hornclaw's case, that means facing off with Bullfight (Kim Sung-cheol), a bloodthirsty sadist who wants to unseat their shared agency's current queen. You see, many years ago, he had a nanny who... Oh, check out Min Kyu-dong's fun action pic and find out.
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