The Vil­lain­ess

The price of free­dom is stag­ger­ing­ly high in Jung Byung-Gil’s enjoy­able action thriller The Vil­lain­ess, as an elite killer trained since child­hood and who lat­er serves Korea’s Intel­li­gence Agency has to fight for life and lib­er­ty. The film’s open­ing scene – which is part­ly filmed first-per­son POV – intro­duces Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin) who, dur­ing a fero­cious fight sequence, defeats a large crowd of armed men. This offers a direct and bloody pre­cur­sor of things to come, as well as cement­ing our heroine’s badass credentials.

Sook-hee is arrest­ed and hand­ed to the nefar­i­ous Intel­li­gence Agency where she is forced to hone her killer craft along­side oth­er trained assas­sins. But she still des­per­ate­ly wants out, and so takes us on a tour of this high secu­ri­ty, high spec stock­ade dur­ing her lat­est (abortive) escape attempt. Flash­backs to an idyl­lic past add to the film’s inten­si­ty and flesh out Sook-hee’s dra­mat­ic back­sto­ry. These inter­ludes can be repet­i­tive at times, but they have a tem­per­ing effect: the more hushed, sen­ti­men­tal scenes with her new fam­i­ly are essen­tial to catch the breath between the bouts of mayhem.

One high­light sees Sook-hee, dressed in a wed­ding gown, com­plet­ing a new mis­sion in the venue’s rest rooms and miss­ing the tar­get, a man who reminds her of past love Joong-sang (Shin Ha-kyun). This sur­pris­ing roman­tic sub­plot appears like an inter­est­ing new twist, but it isn’t. Instead it feels hur­ried and more like a cheap device, leav­ing details over­looked and lead­ing to an inevitable and upset­ting climax.

Still, it’s the amaz­ing fights and pre­cise­ly-exe­cut­ed chore­og­ra­phy which make up for the shaky sto­ry­telling: whether it is a bat­tle with swords, a night motor­bike chase or an axe clash in a bus pelt­ing at full speed, there are undoubtably great moments here. As a whole, though, it doesn’t work quite so well.