Assassins: Was the killing of Kim Jong-nam a prank gone wrong?

The LOL T-shirt makes it a spectacle to rival Burhan Ozbilici’s extraordinary photograph of Mevlut Mert Altintas waving his gun in the air in the moment after he fired nine bullets into Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov at an exhibition in Ankara in 2016. But the story behind the image is weirder than incongruous slogans.

In Assassins, Ask Dr Ruth director Ryan White investigates the most bizarre political slaying of the 21st century.

Upon first viewing, the CCTV footage looks unambiguous. On February 13th, 2017, two teenage girls stroll through Kuala Lumpur airport. One of them is wearing a LOL T-shirt as they ambush a man. The girls walk away, holding their hands – which are covered with the lethal nerve agent VX – away from their persons. The man they smeared with VX is Kim Jong-nam, half-brother to Kim Jong-un, and – as the eldest son of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il – sometime heir apparent in North Korea.

In the footage, Kim Jong-nam is already limping as he enlists the help of airport security. Within 20 minutes he’s dead. The immigrant girls – Siti Aisyah from Indonesia and Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam – are arrested within days.

Their trial makes for sensational headlines around the world, not least because the two girls contend that they accosted Kim Jong-nam as part of a prank show at the behest of a Japanese producer. Were the young women used as political pawns as part of an international conspiracy? White certainly thinks so.

Assassins chronicles the hardships of Jakarta-born Aisyah, who left her native city only to end up working in Malaysian massage parlours. Her Facebook page shows her partying with friends at the Hard Rock Cafe on the night before she killed Kim Jong-nam. In the village where Huong grew up, her father proudly displays her school certificates; her mother protests that the girl was too squeamish to kill a chicken on the family farm.

Blake Neely’s tense score adds drama as Assassins teases out political possibilities. It’s a fascinating news story, but the film’s additional, if entertaining speculations remain just that.

On Demand from Friday, January 29th