The Villainess is a 2017 South Korean action film directed by Jung Byung-gil, starring Kim Ok-bin. It revolves around a woman who is an assassin and goes on a revenge rampage. The Villainess (2017) movie review
The movie plot is not anything new and it doesn’t try to be. The uniqueness of the movie comes in the way it was filmed. This involves nauseating camera angles and action scenes cut to death to show lack of professionalism. Every scene that has even the smallest trace of action is shaken up like it is a found footage movie. I get it, the main character is a bad-ass. However, her action scenes are too shaky for me to take her as a professional assassin. She cries a lot and you feel bad for her because she had a really tough life. Her assassin skills are no better than all of her colleagues though.
Also, the bike scene, which many people loved, is awful. They sped up the bike and the footage in the background to make the main character look like she can fight as well as drive a cool bike. Few scenes where the camera swoopes the remainder of the bike to get to the other side were decent, but everything else looked way too fake. It is understandable that filming these types of scenes is difficult, which is why the filmmakers thought this will set them apart seeing how prominently it is featured in the trailers. However, I was out of it most of the time because it looked too fake. Nothing about it drew me in so I did not care about the main character, her struggles, or the endless number of extras she kills.
To the film’s credit, the beginning scene is awesome. It is done with a long shot where we see the main character killing a ton of people, all done from her perspective. It was well done and we can clearly see all the action developing in front of her. However, the middle part was slow. There is a bunch of dialogue, a bunch of crying, training, and a few scenes of short action. It almost seemed the director didn’t know what to do so he pulled out a bunch of random scenes hoping something will stick and bring him closer to the end fight.
At times it feels like there is too much to focus on. The main character is going through way too many things like trauma from the past, hiding current work, taking care of her daughter, hanging out with the handsome next door neighbor, moving to a new place, her father’s disappearance. There is more to her and it’s too much.
You want to see the main character kick ass, but she only does it at the beginning and end. Middle is a lot of crying, deception, secrets, and her getting mad. Also there is a pointless plastic surgery scene as well as a bunch of flashback scenes that could not be more boring. There are some scenes where scenes are shown as if they were filmed from my 2007 cellphone. Also pointless since they last a few seconds.
Finally, as a cherry on the cake, the villains are boring and not just over the top evil, but cartoonishly evil. Kind of hard to take them seriously. Maybe this was just me hating on the movie for no reason, but I just couldn’t get invested. The story itself is OK, but the action, which is the core of the movie, was mediocre at best.
Thanks for reading my The Villainess (2017) movie review
