Kwon Sang-woo and Jung Joon-ho reunite for the movie ‘Hitman 2’, which opens on the 22nd. Despite the COVID-19 situation in 2020, the two actors once again play the roles of Jun, a webtoon writer who was an excellent NIS assassin, and Chun Deok-gyu, the director of the NIS who is Jun‘s reliable senior and assistant. They cooperate to prevent a ‘copycat terror attack’ in Seoul.

Since it is a sequel that has been released only five years ago, the two actors, who are confident in even more upgraded humor and action, expressed their determination to ‘continue the ‘Hitman’ series with at least four movies, receiving reviews that say ‘each new movie is ‘better than the previous one’.

O“My role model is Jackie Chan, and I do all the action without a stunt double”

Kwon Sang-woo said that this movie will be a way to make up for the regret of missing the opportunity to gather more viewers due to COVID-19. He said that he thought of it as a “work that will take revenge.”

“The first part wasn’t a huge hit enough to have a sequel, but it did very well on secondary platforms like IPTV and VOD. That’s why I was a bit disappointed with the first part’s score. Our movie isn’t a large-scale film with a production cost of hundreds of billions of won, but I think that works that do well at the box office like this have greater meaning. Rather than a “blockbuster hit” that suddenly draws over 10 million viewers, I want to be an actor who consistently draws around 3 million viewers.”

He performed all the action scenes in the play himself without using any stunt doubles, and he emphasized, “I want to do everything I can myself until I can do it myself.”

“The audience pays to see the movie, so I think actors who appear in such movies should put in the maximum effort they can. There’s also the thrill of rolling around and sweating on set. Actually, I once saw an actor joking around while doing trivial action scenes on set. I was a bit shocked when I saw that and thought, ‘I shouldn’t be doing that.’.”

He then chose Chinese star Jackie Chan, considered the ‘all-time legend of comic action,’, as his role model.’Even now, whenever I see new ‘memes’ about Jackie Chan‘s action scenes on the Internet, I save them on my phone and look at them, thinking, ‘Next time I do an action scene, I should utilize them like this.’ In the movie, there are some scenes where they ‘slip’ while doing action scenes, and they were inspired by Jackie Chan movies.”
O“‘Stairway to Heaven’ Choi Ji-woo, special appearance thanks to a phone call”

Choi Ji-woo, who made a surprise appearance at the end of the movie and left a deep impression, drew attention when she said, “I cast her myself”. The two previously worked together in the drama ‘Stairway to Heaven’, which is considered their representative work.

“I’m an actor who rarely interacts with other actors. Especially after I got married, we completely disappeared. So it‘s ambiguous to ask other actors to appear in cameos, but Choi Ji-woo is so comfortable with me that I can contact her like that. I’m really grateful to Jiwoo, who immediately agreed to appear on the show after just one phone call.”

Recently, he has been showing off his special bond by appearing on his wife Son Tae-young‘s YouTube channel, ‘Mrs. New Jersey Son Tae-young’. He also expressed his affection, saying that he was happy that his wife’s fans have been increasing rapidly through YouTube.

“Actually, my wife didn‘t plan on doing YouTube, but I suggested that she try it. My wife is a really great person, but there were so many people who had colored glasses about her and wrote malicious comments, so I was upset. I thought that if my wife’s natural appearance was revealed, there would be fewer reactions like that, but I‘m happy that there have actually been many positive reactions. These days, the first thing I do when I wake up is look at my wife’s YouTube comments.”


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com