Fourteen years after Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” took the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, South Korean cinema still represents the vanguard of action cinema. It is not surprising, then, that with each edition the festival looks to the Korean peninsula to get things rowdy. Consequently, the country has been represented among Cannes’ Midnight selections for the last four years running. 2016 selection “Train to Busan” proved to be a watershed moment, going on to become a box-office hit internationally as well as in its home market. Doubling down for its 2017 edition, Cannes brought in two Korean midnighters, and the first to bat is Jung Byung-gil’s “The Villainess.” Although the actioner is bookended by two visceral action sequences, everything in between the opening and closing high points is melodramatic and often confusing.
The thorny plot of “The Villainess” follows young woman Sook-hee (Kim Ok-vin), who has been raised as a relentless assassin. After the culmination of the elaborate introductory fight scene, she is apprehended by the government, represented by Chief Kwon (Kim Seo-hyung) and given a second life as the member of a sleeper cell designed to take out top-ranking gang bosses. Over the course of her training, the killer gives birth to a daughter, whose advancing age helps to mark the passage of time (about five years or so). Released back into the world as an undercover stage actress, Sook-hee falls for her neighbor, Hyun-soo (Bang Sung-jun), also a sleeper agent and groomed to seduce her and keep tabs on her loyalties. The concern is that Sook-hee will return to organized crime, a fear that becomes more pressing when it is discovered that her gangster ex-husband (Shin Ha-kyun, a familiar face for fans of Park’s early films) — the death she is avenging at the beginning of “The Villainess”— is alive after all.
This rundown only begins to scratch the surface of the film’s bonkers twists and turns. With most of key beats revealed via unmarked flashbacks, the plot of “The Villainess” gets tangled to the point of distraction. Motivation is often baffling and occasionally left unexplained, such as why Sook-hee displays loyalty to her ex Joong-sang, who raised her after he had killed her father. Only near the end do the stakes become clear, but audience investment at this point is almost non-existent. The performances don’t help all that much; lead actress Kim Ok-vin and Shin’s baddie are sturdy, but the other performers can’t hide their Korean television drama roots. Jung Byung-gil indulges in the melodrama, particularly during the romantic interludes between Sook-hee and Hyun-soo, but their chemistry falls flat.
The press kit for “The Villainess” boasts that the film offers “reference-less action.” On the contrary; Jung’s film, while technically accomplished, has a tendency to come across as the sum of its inspirations. The homages are evident from the first frame, which ignites an action sequence that comes across like a marriage of “Oldboy” (set in a dingy hallway) and “Hardcore Henry” (first-person POV). The references to Park’s classic don’t end there — during Sook-hee’s detainment in a small room, she is drugged while her physical appearance is transformed. As for the use of the first-person perspective, Jung is wise to display some restraint and not insist on the technique for the entirety of an action sequence. The first rupture of perspective occurs when Sook-hee’s head is smashed against a mirror in the initial fight; it’s a canny trick, with the camera shifting from first to third-person as her reflection disorients the viewer.
There are many more tips of the hat to accompany all the CG arterial spray in “The Villainess,” with Michael Mann, “Kill Bill” and “The Bride Wore Black” among them. At least in the film’s final act Jung pulls off an inspired action Hail Mary, with an extended chase that moves from a Chinese restaurant to the streets, in a car and, finally, on a bus, all without letting the characters or the camera pause to take a breath. Beyond the aforementioned gore and one silly explosion, computer effects are kept to a minimum and ensure the proceedings remain visceral.
“The Villainess” confounds its audience on two levels: firstly, how the filmmakers pulled off the elaborate set pieces and secondly, leaving them to wonder what the hell is going on in the plot. The simplest beats are dumbfounding, such as why a world-class killer — one that works her way through a solid twenty gangsters in the film’s breathless first ten minutes — is sent to assassin school by the government. Asian cinema distributor Well Go USA has picked up the film, which should have a modicum of commercial success based on the marketable appeal of its elaborate fight sequences. It’s clear that Jung Byung-gil has a firm handle on action, but the director will have to straighten out his storytelling before he can join Park, Bong Joon-Ho and Kim Jee-woon and others in the big leagues as name brand South Korean filmmakers. [C]
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