Co-writer/director Jung Byung-gil wears his cinematic influences proudly on his sleeve for The Villainess, a breakneck actioner fueled by the vengeance of a woman wronged on her wedding day, who goes on to become a trained assassin for an elite agency, only to see her past and her present collide violently once certain truths are revealed. Featuring breathtaking and meticulously conceived action set pieces, The Villainess is undoubtedly an impressive slice of high-energy heaven; but when it comes to story, Byung-gil stuffs his narrative with too many side characters, flashbacks, and double-crosses, making for an often perplexing tale that feels just a bit more complicated than it needs to be.
That being said, the action still more than makes up for The Villainess’ minor missteps, and it’s still a film that’s well worth your time for those of you who dig on jaw-dropping feats of filmic ferocity.
The Villainess opens up utilizing a first-person POV as we watch an unseen assailant fileting, stabbing, shooting, and hacking their way through dozens of attackers awaiting them down a long corridor, undoubtedly a nod to a similar frenetic fight scene from Oldboy, in what’s meant to feel like a one-take sequence (I was only able to identify one cut, but that one was so well-hidden, there may be more). During a mirror smash, Byung-gil reveals the character behind all the chaos: Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin), and that’s when the filmmaker cleverly changes the film’s perspective, and we get to behold just how bloody things can get when the young woman has revenge on her mind.
Sook-hee is captured after her murder spree, and recruited against her will into a secretive Korean agency that specializes in training deadly sleeper agents to do their bidding. The only reason Sook-hee eventually goes along with the wishes of her new employer is that she finds out she’s pregnant, which motivates her in an entirely new way. As a trainee, she undergoes plastic surgery to change her appearance, and is conditioned, both physically and mentally, to become an unflinching killing machine that will stop at nothing to get the job done.
Once unleashed into the real world, Sook-hee befriends her neighbor Hyun-soo (Sung Jun), who is secretly working for the same organization and is tasked with keeping tabs on the trained killer. Things get complicated between the two, and even more problematic than that is the re-introduction of a familiar face from Sook-hee’s past, one that still has a score to settle with the murderess, putting everyone she loves in jeopardy.
If that sounds like a lot of plot, that’s only the tip of the iceberg to The Villainess, as Byung-gil and co-writer Jung Byeong-sik work in numerous other characters and storylines throughout the film’s two-hour running time that effectively demonstrates the pair’s ambitious need to fully flesh out Sook-hee’s complex world, but in doing so, the film often loses focus of its protagonist. And that’s a damned shame, because Ok-bin is a force of nature in The Villainess, and anytime the story moves away from her character, that’s when things got far less interesting for me. This is also the perfect time to mention Park Chan-wook’s Thirst, one of his more underrated flicks, because Ok-bin gives another strong performance there, too, and I enjoyed how this role in The Villainess gave the actress some real opportunities to shine.
As mentioned, the action in The Villainess is on a completely different level, with the opening scene, a balls-out finale, and several other exhilarating sequences in between for good measure. While Byung-gil and cinematographer Park Jung-hun set the bar high early with their inventive approach to shooting the opening fights, what they manage to do during several other thrilling vehicle chase scenes is equally masterful on a technical level (there are several moments, including one involving Sook-hee driving a car at full speed while perched upon the vehicle’s hood, that still have me baffled as to how exactly they were able to pull them off).
There’s no doubt that Byung-gil set out to tip his hat to the projects of Quentin Tarantino and Park Chan-wook with The Villainess (and perhaps even The Raid movies, as well as Hardcore Henry), and while he gives his homages enough of a twist to make this story somewhat unique, I’d love to see what the filmmaker could do if he just unleashed his own sense of mayhem into a project, and perhaps went for a more streamlined narrative that doesn’t needlessly overcomplicate things. That being said, The Villainess is still an incredible cinematic feat nonetheless, and for those of you looking for some kick-ass movie action, you’ll definitely dig on all the blood-soaked mayhem Sook-hee and her murderous skill set bring to the table here.
Movie Score: 3.5/5
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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