THE VILLAINESS: The Action Is First

The Villainess gets off to an absolutely blistering start with a staggering shoot-em-up and slash-em-up sequence, that plays like the Oldboy hallway scene by way of Hardcore Henry, as we watch Ok-bin Kim’s assassin Sook-hee rack up a body count of around 40 in a hallway, a flight of stairs and in a gym, through her point of view. There’s a point in the gym section where she has her head smashed against her mirror and the mirror is expertly utilized to break away from her point of view and depict the rest of the scene from the third person perspective.

At a time where the use of long-takes for fight scenes is becoming increasingly popular and rightfully applauded (see Kingsman, Atomic Blonde, etc.), the opening of The Villainess is a dazzler.

Lights, camera and action

This is a scene that could have existed in any female-centric vigilante flick such as Nikita or Kill Bill, and both films are heavy inspirations for the story of The Villainess (which is described later in this review), but that doesn’t matter so much because the strengths of the film are within the execution of these action sequences. The inventive marriage of the first and third person perspective is perfectly ripe and ready for a remake in Hollywood.

The Villainess reaches these heights again in the film’s few other violent parts and most of them take place within the first 40 minutes to capitalize on and maintain the momentum gathered from the get-go. There are vehicular action sequences that showcase the work of a stunt, choreography, lighting and cinematography team, all impressively working in tandem, that’s of a caliber not seen since The Raid 2.

The narrative upholding our anticipation for the next fighting bit (because they’re undoubtedly the best parts of the film and are some of the finest this year) is a fairly convoluted one, beginning with a simple set-up of Sook-hee being recruited as a government agent after they see the surveillance footage of her single-handedly wiping out a meth-peddling gang, and they promise to let her lead a normal life if she works with them for ten years, until she crosses paths with two particular men who then muddy the waters of the plot with their relationship to her.

Her new life as a sleeper cell turns her into a stage actress for her primary identity. It’s a relatively bizarre occupation that nevertheless justifies why someone would take an interest in her – she assumes they’re a fan of her work. I don’t think I’ve seen a female assassin/agent moonlight as Laurence Olivier so it’s quite a refreshing role within the sub-genre, especially considering the film never plays with her role in the way the title suggests.

She’s known violence her whole life

During the relentlessly paced first act, director Byung-gil Jung unpeels the mystique of his ass-kicking protagonist with memories triggered by her circumstances – a handgun boot-camp montage is interspersed with clips of similar firearm preparation under her old mentor Joong Sang (a major character in the plot, portrayed by Ha-kyun Shin), providing the rationale behind her sheer ability to gracefully take down a hell of a lot of bad guys, and an eye-to-eye confrontation with a target’s child recalls the traumatic childhood memory of when she followed her father’s advice and hid under a bed to avoid figures unknown in the house and subsequently bore witness to them executing him less than two feet away from her.

After all this information is dispersed in the first act, the action movie we’re so thoroughly enjoying comes to a grinding halt before being resurrected considerably later. The second act devotes much of its time to fleshing out her relationship with the aforementioned Joong Sang through extended flashbacks and with her love-struck neighbour, Hyun-Soo (Jun Sung) who ruins the surprise of potential plot twists by declaring to her early on that he’s not who she thinks he is. However, the film has enough thick plot twists that warrant the emergence of a different film within The Villainess – a mystery thriller about new lives, old lives and love lives.

Chief family matters

It’s far less captivating than its violent counterpart as it messily unravels through years of space and time – with the love angle threatening to become a wholly independent story in itself – and some of the more intriguing characters take a backseat to these two men, whose complicated histories with Sook-hee become progressively hard to stay focused on as we learn more about them or at least think we do before the plot twists into a pretzel.

Amongst the supporting characters who intrigued me more than Hyun-Soo and Joong Sang, the top contenders include Chief Kwon, the lead authority of the agency who recruit Sook-hee – I didn’t quite catch their name but my best guess is the Federal Bureau of Exposition. She’s played convincingly and confidently by Seo-hyeong Kim (who intrigued me before I even her saw her face – she’s shot in silhouette in her first scene, in which she’s the only one who sees potential in Sook-hee as an asset to the government).

The other two contenders would be Sook-hee’s father and daughter. It was the death of her father that got her into this mess. The motivation to be a good mother to her daughter is a key factor in her decision to carry out a decade’s worth of government-sanctioned assassinations, for the promise of a normal life. The relationships with her biological family certainly had room for development.

To the benefit of maintaining our interest throughout, the one thing that stays consistent as the film veers from action to romance to mystery is the quality of the camerawork. Of course, it’s most majestic when Sook-hee is in combat but all throughout of the film the camera glides up, down, left, right and around the characters to smoothly transition between past and present, from one location to another, and reveal important information – though some of this unfortunately causes the plot to become more laborious to follow.

The Villainess: Conclusion

The Villainess left me wanting more, for positive and negative reasons. Sook-hee and her shooting and slicing skills are spectacular, as are the crew responsible for engineering those splendid set pieces. Jung-hun Park’s flawless filming of them is inevitably going to be imitated. Too bad that, after a strong start, the plot takes a different direction away from the violence, then a different direction, and then a different direction, before a stunning finish.

Do you agree with me that The Villainess suffers from disjointed storytelling? Do you also agree with me that the action scenes are some of the finest of this year? Please share your thoughts in the comments below! 

The Villainess is now playing in a limited release in cinemas across the UK and USA. For all international release dates, see here.