''Assassins'' is a 2020 American documentary film, directed and produced by

Ryan White Ryan Wayne White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990) was an American teenager from Kokomo, Indiana, who became a national poster child for HIV/AIDS in the United States after his school barred him from attending classes following a diagn ...

. It talks about the

assassination of Kim Jong-nam On 13 February 2017, the eldest son of Kim Jong-il and half-brother of Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-nam, was attacked with the nerve agent VX at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. He had been exiled from North Korea in 2003 and had been ...

and the two assassins who were tricked. The film had its world premiere at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

on January 26, 2020. It was released on December 11, 2020 by

Greenwich Entertainment Greenwich Entertainment, founded in 2017, is an independent film distribution company specializing in distinctive, theatrical-quality narrative and documentary features. The company released Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi’s Academy Award-Wi ...

Synopsis

The film follows the

, as he is assassinated by two young women who were tricked and thought they were participating in a prank show.

Release

The film had its world premiere at the

on January 26, 2020. Shortly after,

Magnolia Pictures Magnolia Pictures is an American film distributor. It is a subsidiary of Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment. Magnolia was formed in 2001 by Bill Banowsky and Eamonn Bowles, and specializes in both foreign and independent films. Mag ...

acquired distribution rights to the film. Due to the subject matter, the film struggled to find distribution, with Magnolia opting to release the film internationally instead, and

Hulu Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television serie ...

acquiring rights to the film before dropping it. In September 2020,

acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film. It was released on December 11, 2020. In June 2021, ''Assassins'' was granted art movie status following an initial rejection by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC) in May 2021.

Reception

Critical reception

''Assassins'' received positive reviews from film critics. It holds approval rating on the review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on reviews, with an average of . The site's critical consensus reads, "A deft and illuminating journalistic investigation, ''Assassins'' depicts the mechanics of North Korean politics to a chilling effect." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film holds a rating of 74 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."

References

External links

* * * {{Ryan White 2020 films 2020 documentary films American documentary films Films scored by Blake Neely Documentary films about nuclear war and weapons Documentary films about law Documentary films about organized crime Documentary films about North Korea Documentary films about death 2020s American films