It’s all fun and games until… - Asssassins Review
“Assassins” by Ryan White - 8/10
On 13th February 2017, Kim Jong-nam was assassinated at Kuala Lumpur International Airport by two female assassins using the fastest acting poison in existence, VX. It seemed like something out of a spy movie, an expertly planned and choreographed execution. But no one could have foreseen the elaborate hoax which led the women, Siti Aisyah and Doan Ti Huong, to the airport that day.
Ryan White’s documentary tells the almost unbelievable story of two women unwittingly entangled in an international murder plot. Their stories are cleverly interspersed with the political context of the assassination, which strongly suggests North Korean involvement. Kim Jong-un’s ascension to total power at the tender age of 25 made him particularly ruthless in instilling loyalty in the senior ranks of the North Korean regime and any challenge or criticism has been met with all his might. This would not be the first time he has ordered the execution of a member of his own family. Naturally, North Korea denied all involvement despite playing hard ball over the return of North Korean suspects in the custody of the Malaysian police, going as far as to hold Malaysian citizens hostage in North Korea until the suspects were let go. Seems like they may have had something to hide…
White portrays the two women as scapegoats. After all the North Koreans had got away scot-free, Siti and Doan found themselves facing the death penalty. Through interviews with the two women, they tell the story of how they were tricked and manipulated into performing the assassination which they thought was just another in a string of pranks being filmed by a Japanese production company: an extraordinary defence. How could these women have not known what they were doing? Doan is shown on CCTV wearing a sweatshirt with ‘LOL’ printed on the front. Could this be the most audacious assassin ever? Or an oblivious pawn in a political chess game?
An investigation unveils how a group of North Korean men groomed the two girls, over the 2 months prior, by paying them to perform similar or identical pranks. Almost all of which involved rubbing baby lotion on the face of an unsuspecting passer-by.
The triumph of this documentary is to illuminate the suffering endured by the two naïve, desperate and innocent women caught up in this drama. They were in prison for over two years before (*spoiler alert*) they were both released following political pressure from their respective governments (Doan was from Vietnam and Siti was from Indonesia). An interview with Siti, after she is released, devastatingly reveals she did not even know who Kim Jong-nam was until she had the freedom to research the case for herself outside of prison.
As far as filmmaking goes, the production of “Assassins” is nothing new. White uses commentary from Hadi Azmi, a Malaysian journalist who covered the story from start to finish; and Anna Fifield, the Washington Post’s bureau chief in Beijing, who has been covering North Korea since 2004; to navigate viewers through events while we are invited to pore over CCTV footage, Instagram video and text message evidence. But when paired with a complicated and far-fetched narrative, it’s an effective approach that provides impressive clarity.
