The Villainess (2017) Review: Dazzling Fights, Tangled Plot

Is The Villainess worth watching?

Yes, if you come for the action. The Villainess contains some of the most breathless, technically audacious fight sequences in modern Korean cinema, and Kim Ok-vin is a ferocious lead. Jung Byung-gil’s camera seems to go anywhere, and the set pieces alone justify a watch for genre fans. The reservation is the story in between: a convoluted, flashback-heavy melodrama that slows the film down and never matches the energy of its violence.

What is The Villainess about?

The Villainess follows Sook-hee (Kim Ok-vin), who was raised from childhood by a criminal organisation to be a killer. After a spectacular massacre, she is taken in by a South Korean intelligence agency and offered a deal: work as a sleeper agent under a new identity for ten years, and she will be free.

She tries to build an ordinary life while carrying out assignments for her handlers, but her past, particularly her bond with the man who trained her (Shin Ha-kyun), refuses to stay buried. Sung Joon and Kim Seo-hyung co-star. Jung directs from a screenplay he co-wrote. The South Korean film is in Korean, runs 129 minutes, and premiered in the Midnight Screenings section at Cannes in 2017.

An opening that rewrites the rules of screen combat

The film’s first sequence is its calling card: a long, first-person assault through the corridors of a building, shot as if through Sook-hee’s eyes, with blades, guns and bodies flying at the camera. It then shifts seamlessly into third person without breaking momentum. It recalls the corridor fight from Oldboy and the POV brawling of video games, but the scale and fluidity feel new, and it is genuinely thrilling to watch.

Other set pieces are nearly as inventive, particularly a sword fight staged on speeding motorcycles that is as reckless and graceful as anything in the genre. Jung, a former stuntman, clearly understands physical choreography, and his camera follows the fighters with an agility that makes the action feel dangerous and dizzying. Few action films of its era took this many risks with their staging.

Kim Ok-vin carries the violence and the grief

Kim Ok-vin, known internationally for Park Chan-wook’s Thirst, is excellent in a role that asks her to be a lethal fighter and a wounded, isolated young woman. She performs much of the action with convincing ferocity, and in quieter scenes she suggests someone who has never been allowed a self of her own. Her physical commitment gives the film its credibility.

Shin Ha-kyun brings menace and a strange, twisted tenderness to the mentor who shaped her, while Kim Seo-hyung is cool and pragmatic as the intelligence chief who takes Sook-hee on. Sung Joon’s role as a man in her new life is more thinly drawn, a device of the plot more than a character.

Where the melodrama drags

The film’s great weakness is its storytelling. The narrative leaps between timelines, sometimes confusingly, and much of the middle hour is taken up with romantic and familial melodrama that feels overextended and occasionally overwrought. The emotional stakes are clear in theory, but the film spends so long explaining its revenge plot that the tension slackens between fights. It is two films sharing a running time: a dazzling action showcase and a fairly routine revenge drama.

Who should watch The Villainess?

This is for fans of action cinema and hyperkinetic fight choreography, especially viewers who love Korean revenge thrillers. It is extremely violent, with graphic stabbings, shootings and bloodshed, and it is strictly for adults. Be prepared for a slower middle section and a runtime of over two hours.

If it hooks you, try these next:

• Oldboy, Park Chan-wook’s revenge classic, whose famous corridor fight is an obvious ancestor of this film’s opening.
• The Man from Nowhere, another Korean action thriller with a lethal loner at its core, with a steadier story holding its fights together.

The verdict

The Villainess is a flawed but exhilarating action film, with set pieces so bold they overshadow a tangled, overlong story. For its choreography and Kim Ok-vin’s committed lead performance, it is well worth seeing, but go in expecting the plot to be the weakest link.

Rating: 3.5/5