The defence The Arthouse Gremlin
“Its refusal to behave is the point.”
The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.
Back to trending 
The Old Woman with the Knife
Action · Mystery · Drama · 2025
Aging assassin Hornclaw has seen it all, but she never expected to mentor a reckless rookie like Bullfight. As their unlikely bond deepens, cracks form in the underworld they navigate together. When Hornclaw discovers someone wants her dead, she's thrust into a deadly game of deception. With enemies closing in and trust in short supply, survival means staying sharp—both blade and mind.
Movie details
The Old Woman with the Knife
“Now I see who you are.”
2025 Action · Mystery · Drama 2h 3m
Critical arithmetic
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
6.0 / 10
1.1K votes
Rotten Tomatoes
93 %
Tomatometer
TMDB
6.5 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
Aging assassin Hornclaw has seen it all, but she never expected to mentor a reckless rookie like Bullfight. As their unlikely bond deepens, cracks form in the underworld they navigate together. When Hornclaw discovers someone wants her dead, she's thrust into a deadly game of deception. With enemies closing in and trust in short supply, survival means staying sharp—both blade and mind.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over The Old Woman with the Knife?
For the defence
The Arthouse Gremlin
“The stranger, the better.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Popcorn Loyalist
“Big screen, big feelings, no apologies.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
Deliver Us from Evil
Crime · 2020
A retired contract killer goes on a bloody rampage when a young girl finds herself at the mercy of gangland human traffickers and only one man can come to her rescue, with an arsenal of weapons and years of experience in the art of killing.
A Bittersweet Life
Action · 2005
Kim Sun-woo is an enforcer and manager for a hotel owned by a cold, calculative crime boss, Kang who assigns Sun-woo to a simple errand while he is away on a business trip; to shadow his young mistress, Hee-soo, for fear that she may be cheating on him with a younger man with the mandate that he must kill them both if he discovers their affair.
Mexicali
Action · 2026
A former special forces contractor is forced out of retirement as an avocado farmer in Mexico when local gangsters try to force him and his family off their farm.
Seal Team Eight: Behind Enemy Lines
Action · 2014
Seal Team Eight must fight their way deep into Africa's Congo, decommission a secret uranium mine, and stop our most dangerous enemy from smuggling weapon's grade yellow-cake out of the country.
The Substitute
Action · 1996
When an inner-city Miami schoolteacher gets her knee broken after standing up to the school's gang leader, her mercenary combat specialist boyfriend goes undercover as a substitute teacher to take down the punk. Soon he discovers a conspiracy of criminals at work, and must reassemble his team from his last jungle raid to stop them.
Convict
Action · 2014
Set in the dark and old Parramatta prison built by the original convicts our lead character Ray a war veteran finds himself serving 18 months for manslaughter after defending his fiance. He soon realizes that the prison boss has it in for him and does everything possible to break Ray even going after his fiance.
In Hell
Action · 2003
A man must survive a prison where hardened criminals battle to the death for the warden's entertainment.
Al Capone
Action · 1959
In this unusually accurate biography, small-time hood Al Capone comes to Chicago at the dawn of Prohibition to be the bodyguard of racketeer Johnny Torrio. Capone's rise in Chicago gangdom is followed through murder, extortion, and political fraud. He becomes head of Chicago's biggest "business," but moves inexorably toward his downfall and ignominious end.
Rise of the Footsoldier 3
Action · 2017
In the late 1980s, Pat Tate journeys from peddling pills in Marbella to his time in prison, where he solidifies his power before his release to reclaim his turf.
Revenge of the Ninja
Action · 1983
A peaceful ex-ninja's life shatters when his son's kidnapping forces him back into violence amid an American-Japanese criminal drug war.
Where it lives
Watch in your region.
Cinema release signals and current streaming, rental, and purchase options for your region.
Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.
Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Min Kyu-dong
Written by
Min Kyu-dong
Lee Hye-young
Hornclaw
Kim Sung-cheol
Bullfight
Yeon Woo-jin
Dr. Kang
Ok Ja-yeon
Cho-yeop
Kim Moo-yul
Ryu
Shin Sia
Young Hornclaw Min Seol-hwa
Lee Hyun-gul
Han Seong-do
Court is in session
Put The Old Woman with the Knife on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist
“Oddness is not depth.”
A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.