As soon as you start watching The Villainess, it immediately becomes very clear that this is a tough as nails action movie. You witness a fight which is best described as a mix between the first person view of Hardcore Henry and the famous hall fight in Old Boy. It’s tightly choreographed and extremely violent. Just like Park Chan-Wook’s classic this movie (originally called Ak-Nyeo) is also South Korean. It’s been directed by Byung-gil Jung.
Yeon-soo is a hitman and she’s extremly efficient at her work. She’s captured though and brought to a secret facility. She forget who she was and receives training. She can get her freedom back by working for a mysterious client. She is allowed to lead a relative normal life, but is being watched by an agent living next to her. Yeon-soo regularly experiences flashbacks and tries to find out what exactly is going on. This results in a situation where she is struggling with her assignements and her own goals.
This is a movie you should watch, but not because of the story. It is sometimes difficult to keep up and Byung-gil Jung doesn’t succeed in making Yeon-soo a character you care for completely. The movie has some similarities with La Femme Nikita>, but that movie was better. You should see this movie for its action. There are a lot of scenes where you simply wonder how they managed to pull it off. An example of this is a motorcycle chase where the actor not only pull off incredible stunts, but the camera itself does things which seem impossible. For actionfans there is a lot to enjoy, even though the story can’t keep up with the action.
[score6]