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★★½☆☆
31 August 2017
A movie review of THE VILLAINESS. |
"That's the only reason why I'm still alive," Sook-hee (Ok-bin Kim)
THE VILLAINESS is a mess. The camerawork is all over the place. The editing is all over the place. The story is all over the place. The tone is all over the place. It somehow still engages through sheer energetic forcefulness. The audience is grabbed by the collar and yanked along the runtime, pausing for some out of place sentimentality. For the last six years the action genre has taken a leap forward in combat choreography. From THE RAID and JOHN WICK to ATOMIC BLONDE, cinema attendees have been treated to masterclasses in heady set-pieces. THE VILLAINESS attempts to join them, but makes a pig's ear. One can see that director Byung-gil Jung is experimenting with a signature visual style.
THE VILLAINESS is a mess. The camerawork is all over the place. The editing is all over the place. The story is all over the place. The tone is all over the place. It somehow still engages through sheer energetic forcefulness. The audience is grabbed by the collar and yanked along the runtime, pausing for some out of place sentimentality. For the last six years the action genre has taken a leap forward in combat choreography. From THE RAID and JOHN WICK to ATOMIC BLONDE, cinema attendees have been treated to masterclasses in heady set-pieces. THE VILLAINESS attempts to join them, but makes a pig's ear. One can see that director Byung-gil Jung is experimenting with a signature visual style.
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The opening first-person perspective, video gamer-esque, death run of carnage has too many echoes of HARDCORE HENRY, and is even less clear. It's like looking at proceedings through an orb, and curtails enjoyment of the mêlées. Obscuring action sequences is rarely a positive. The tired, incompetent technique of rapid editing is repeatedly used. Incomprehensibility is never an accolade. A motorbike sword fight on paper sounds fresh, but the execution is almost nonsensical.
As the lead cuts a swathe through unending henchmen, it is revealed (for those who know nothing of the movie in advance) that we are in the presence of a preternaturally gifted female assassin. Her lethality is jaw-dropping. Rampaging through a gang's offices and in-house drug lab, a variety of weapons are improvised to reach the end of level boss. Arrested, post-massacre, Sook-hee (Ok-bin Kim) is forcibly given plastic surgery to alter her appearance and recruited into some shady government counter-assassin death squad initiative. LA FEMME NIKITA (1990) immediately springs to mind. As does KILL BILL. The continual movie déjà vu turns the story into a derivative plot. You will likely guess the big reveal long before the lead.
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Even with a badass female lead, THE VILLAINESS is weirdly regressive when it comes to romance. Can we do away with cheesy love interests for lady characters please? Undercover agent and love interest Hyun-soo (Jun Sung) looks as if he has just walked off the set of a boy band music video.
Sook-hee has a young daughter who brings unrequired cuteness. Who thought that was a good idea to be added to an ultra-violent action flick? It didn't work in FACE/OFF either (bar the 'Over the Rainbow' police raid sequence of course). At least boss and handler, Chief Kwon (Seo-hyeong Kim) is all formidable business.
Adding gravitas to THE VILLAINESS is the grim reality of Sook-hee's life. Her journey is so physically and emotionally gruelling you almost forget she is a murderer for hire and not just trying to survive/exact some sort of justice. And by 'some sort of justice', one means that no adult has a clean conscience. The denizens of this world range from the bad to the inhuman.
Let's hope director Byung-gil Jung builds upon THE VILLAINESS. Genre nuttiness is always welcome.
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