Directed by Ryan White (Netflix’s The Keepers), Assassins is the sort of mind-bending true crime tale that that will likely never have a fictional Hollywoodized equal: to quote the hackneyed (but in this case appropriate) adage, you simply can’t make this stuff up. White’s deft film investigates the controversial 2017 murder of Kim Jong-Un’s brother, Kim Jong-nam, who was killed with a deadly VX chemical nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur Airport. Kim Jong-nam was headed back home to his home in China when two twenty-something women ran up to him from behind and applied the deadly chemicals to his eyes and face: in the next 10 minutes, the brother of the notorious North Korean dictator was dead. Being a potential heir to the North Korean leadership, Kim Jong Nam was no stranger to death threats, as the other side of his family clearly have an interest in keeping him away from power. But as we learn in the film, Kim Jong-nam was also a paid CIA informant, so however tragic, it seemed inevitable that an assassin would eventually get to him. But Assassins is really about the two women who committed the murder and the utterly bizarre lead up to this deadly event: Doan, a Vietnamese citizen, and Siti, a former sex worker in Indonesia get separately groomed for this treacherous task through North Korean operatives posing as producers of a TV prank show.
The two young women were paid to pull off a series of innocuous public pranks (think Jackass) that, unbeknownst to them, were just practice run for the ultimate “prank” that would take the life of Kim Jong-nam. In the end, Siti and Doan are arrested and jailed—the Malay authorities initially finding them guilty and initially sentencing them both to death by hanging, while the North Korean ring leaders get off scot-free and return to their home county unscathed. The film is meticulous in getting to bottom of how all this really went down, interviewing legal experts and local journalists, plus examining CCTV footage of the murder itself. The real tragedy is of course the cold-blooded premeditation of the murder and the callous manipulation of the two innocent young women to commit a crime they were duped into perpetrating. White’s documentary leaves no stone unturned when it comes to getting to the bottom of this cagey Putinesque public murder. But the film also importantly gives ample reel time to the human element in all this, namely the heartbreaking ordeal of Doan and Siti, whose young lives would be irrevocably and tragically altered forever. “Before, I think the world is pink colored…all people are good people,” says Doan, “but now I see more clear.” Highly Recommended. Aud: C.