ASSASSINS (2020)

ASSASSINS (2020) is a fascinating and surprisingly exciting documentary about the killing at the Malaysian airport of the brother of the president and dictator of North Korea. Strong caution is advised because of the descriptions of the sex trade and of the assassination, but older teenagers with a strong biblical worldview should see ASSASSINS (2020) the movie to understand the evils of totalitarian Marxist and Muslim governments.

The movie opens with a reporter, Hadi Azmi, being assigned to cover for his news outlet the murder of Kim Jong-nam at the Malaysian Kuala Lumpur Airport. He notes to the camera that the press is owned by the government of Malaysia, so it’s hard to get the truth out.

The video footage from the airport cameras clearly show two young women putting their hands on Nam’s face. One of them, Siti Aisyah, is Indonesian, the other one, Doan Thi Huong, is from a poor farming family in Vietnam.

In Malaysia, murder is a mandatory execution by hanging, but when Hadi, the reporter, talks to the various attorneys for each girl, it’s clear there’s a tremendous number of questions about the assassination. First of all, the lawyers point out that neither girl had any reason to assassinate Nam. His younger brother, Kim Jong-un, who is the dictator of North Korea, executed their uncle and has a reason to get rid of his older brother. Jong-nam didn’t want to be the dictator of North Korea, does not believe in dynasties and actually took his children to Disneyland in Japan before moving to Macau, China. However, the older brother Kim Jong-nam was the favorite son of the dictator father, Kim Jong-il, so Kim Jong-nam is always a threat to Kim Jong-un. Further, we find out that Kim Jung-nam was communicating with a CIA agent and actually had $138,000 U.S. money in his suitcase.

The lawyers also show there were eight North Koreans involved in some way behind the scenes. Four of them, who were at the airport, left immediately on a North Korean flight back to North Korea. One of them, a chemist, named Ri Jog Chol, was hiding at the North Korean embassy.

As the lawyers for both girls investigate why the girls would do this, they discover that both of them had come to Malaysia to seek a better life. The reporter points out that the large number of poor young women who come to Malaysia are forced into the sex trade. Kuala Lumpur is an extremely modern city with two of the tallest buildings in the world, but the underside of Kuala Lumpur is the sex trade.

According to one doctor, the chemical used to kill Kim Jong-nam, VX, is the most dangerous, lethal chemical. It kills a person within 15 minutes unless they’ve been detoxed. The girls are seen on the CCTV footage leaving Nam, with their hands out as if they know the chemical is lethal and both heading for different bathrooms.

We soon discover that both girls were very involved with social media. Each one had been hired for a couple months by different men to do prank videos, which are very popular around Asia. One of them asked for $1000 to do prank videos. This was much better than the sex trade. The background on both girls show they had very hard lives. For example, Siti worked in a hard sewing sweatshop factor form 7 am to midnight to support her baby. Therefore, the prank videos were a blessing to each of them. In the prank videos, they were hired by different men, who turned out to be Korean, but who posed as Japanese or Malaysian, to come up behind some person in an airport, with baby oil on their hands to put their hands over the persons eyes as a surprise to an old friend, but then exclaiming they had made a mistake.

The long but very interesting court case leads to the judge pronouncing in a very long sentence that both girls are guilty, but when someone is pronounced guilty in Malaysia the judge can then allow the defendant to testify and the defense to present its case.

Suddenly, an incredible number of unexpected events occur, with Indonesia and then Vietnam being deeply involved.

ASSASSINS is a whodunnit about a real event. The ending of the whodunnit is a revelation of the tremendous flaws in the politicized justice system, which doesn’t have the common law moorings of the American justice system. Politics is involved in every aspect of this case. The North Koreans, who engineered this, seem to get off scot free. What happens to these two young girls, well, you’ll have to wait to watch this movie.

ASSASSINS is very clean in terms of excessive film footage. There is only one “f” word and the footage of the assassination is blurry so that you don’t see the immediate impact of the chemical. Strong caution is advised because of the descriptions of the sex trade and of the assassination. However, older teenagers with a strong biblical worldview should see the movie to understand the evils of Marxist governments like North Korea, China, Vietnam, and closely similar Muslim governments like Malaysia and Indonesia. One comes away appreciating the legal and constitutional rights of American citizens.