ASSASSINS | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Ryan White (12A, 104 mins)
A fascinating documentary about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s half-brother Kim Jong-nam, this is a story way stranger than any fiction. On Feb 13 2017, two women walked up behind Jong-Nam at Kuala Lumpur airport and smeared a deadly toxin on his face: he was dead within the hour. The incident is captured on CCTV, with the pair – Doan Thi Huong and Siti Aisyah – subsequently arrested, facing the wrath of the authorities with a death sentence likely.
So were the duo really trained, cold-blooded assassins, smiling at CCTV cameras in the wake of the attack? Rather, it seems that they were innocent pawns in a deadly political game. Both Huong and Aisyah craved fame of one kind or another to escape poverty (for one of them, additionally, the necessity of sex work to make ends meet). Believing themselves to be taking part in nothing more than a prank show, the film illustrates how they were turned into unknowing weapons.
Through interviews with family and painstaking trawling through CCTV footage, the film follows their legal teams as they mount defenses for their charges, showing how they had been groomed for this killing in broad daylight for months by a shadowy group of handlers – who all hailed from North Korea and had left Malaysia within hours of the attack. The pair had never met before but would spend months behind bars, fighting against the Malaysian judicial system and ultimately forming a sisterly bond.
Gripping and paced like a thriller, this is a gobsmacking account of a daring and chilling assassination that sent a very strong message to any critics of North Korea and the disposable innocents caught up within it.
Out now on digital download
words KEIRON SELF