The Villainess (2017) Bravura actioner containing two of the best scenes of the past decade (Review)

2017 has been a watershed year for Korean cinema. Park Chan-Wook, Kim Jee-Woon, and Joon Ho-Bong returned with the latter directing one of the largest budgets for a Netflix original. Beyond that upper echelon, cult aficionados Arrow Video have finally engaged with Korean cinema by releasing the acclaimed action film, Jung Byung-Gil’s the Villainess. There was also Jang Hoon’s [a] Taxi Driver which garnered plenty of acclaim and a handful of titles released from Eureka too.

Irrespective of genre, few films could ever possibly hope to announce their arrival with as much cockiness as Byung-Gil does with his third film. Take the infamous hammer scene from Old Boy and spread that across the entirety of a building and now place the camera at a POV perspective of Kim Ok-bin who decimates countless men with a body count that makes the club scene from the first Kill Bill look delicate. Stabbing and slashing in every conceivable direction, this is one of the best action scenes in far too long – there’s another equally good one at the end of the film too. The point of view perspective stops when Ok-bin is finally caught with her head bouncing off a mirror. Some have compared this scene to Hardcore Henry, but unlike that deeply ostentatious and disorientating film, Byung-Gil knows when to use this ‘gimmick’ and when not to.

Thrown from a window after Sook-hee (Ok-Bin) has literally killed everyone, she is caught by the police. That is 7 minutes into the film and from there on in the baton is passed over to character and story development; so rattling is that opening salvo of freneticism, a break is nigh on essential making this drastic change welcoming. Seeing the potential that literally landed in their hands, the police hand Sook-Hee over to a secretive agency who reprogram women into sleeper agents to carry out hits on high-profile targets. Pregnant and thought dead by her peers, she goes through the system hoping to return to a normal life. Falling for Jun Sung (Hyun-soo), she gets what she has wanted all of her life that is until her house of cards starts falling apart when ghosts from her past start reappearing – it is an action movie, after all, we can’t be having a peaceful ending.

The Villainess and 2010’s Man from Nowhere work together as great companion pieces, both depict people who try attempting to escape the bleak horror of their personal history through new relationships and children – if anything, though, Kim Ok-Bin’s character has it a lot worse than Won Bin did. She has her dad murdered in front of her, is sold into sex slavery and is later moulded into a perfect assassin. There is also a degree of the women in prison DNA coursing through the genetic makeup of the Villainess. She has quite an ordeal, every step of the way.

Like any modern action film, interest comes from execution and here that comes from editor Heo Sun-mi. The POV cinematography presents inescapable total violence that breaks when the head we are observing events through smashes into the dance studio’s mirror – that alone is the work of a bravura editor. Unlike the western ideal of action cinema, the villainess doesn’t anemically put all of its best work in the action scenes – Sun-mi Heo is wholly consistent. The point at which one scene ends and another begins is seamless in an overblown stylistic way unique to Korean cinema. Like Nicole Kidman’s hair transitioning into Wheat in Stoker, here there are countless such examples, and each one is as showy and flamboyant as the next. One scene has a jump off a bridge to escape segue into a flashback, using that POV cinematography as a bridge between the two.

Whether it is the new wave or this post-wave boom, the dramatic intentions of Byung-Gil’s film are quite generic. Generic, yes, perhaps, but that is in a film rife with flowing cinematography, thoughtful if over-elaborate editing and a cast full of big performances. Kim Ok-Bin is outstanding, turning from a silent killing machine to a woman with nothing to lose via a contented Mother. Likewise, New Wave stalwart Shin Ha-Kyun appears as the quietly maniacal antagonist. This is a simple action film, and for such a film to look this good, be so well acted, give us a compelling reason to care whilst also containing two of the most balls to wall intense action scenes of the decade makes the Villainness one to chalk into the win column.

Thanks for reading our review of The Villainess

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