La villana

I'm feeling very underwhelmed by this film despite being a great fan of the best of Korean cinema. It's been well advertised of late, but don't fall for any possible hype on the movie posters. I don't even think the title makes sense for this movie.

The biggest problem is that this film is simply too close a homage to the classic French film Nikita, and it's not unfair to say a blatant steal. If you've never seen Nikita then you'll likely enjoy this, otherwise you'll be slumped in your chair for the duration. As there has already been a US remake and TV series based on Nikita, most will already know the premise, further denting its value.

Basically think of 4-5 core characters and themes in Nikita, and you'll find their mirror in this film. Run the two side by side and they are probably the same. Some of the scenes should had a copyright watermark from Luc Besson in the corner they were that alike.

The greatest selling point is the action, with a handful of exceptionally well choreographed and filmed scenes that will leave you applauding, especially the opening run in. Hollywood should take a look in. I haven't been excited and amazed watching action scenes for a long while.

Beyond that, there's little to write home about. Story is a copy, the acting is rarely challenging (although our lead is very good) and the dialogue is so so. Shame really.

The twists and turns are unexciting, and are quite frankly poor and unchallenging. There's little good to say there.

Saying all that, our lead has a young child who steals the scenes whenever she's there, so that's a small saving grace and release valve from all the rest.

Disappointing, but still very watchable for the action scenes if little else. If you do want to watch a great alternative Korean film this year, then I would very much recommend The Handmaiden, watch that instead of this.

Sook-hee (OK-bin Kim) was just a little girl when the assassin training started in Yanbian, China. After the death of her mentor, she went to South Korea to work as a government agent. They promised her that she would be free after ten years of service, but the truth was not so easy.

Everything you need to know about "The Villainess" comes in the first ten or fifteen minutes. The opening scene is a first-person, frenetic fight scene that just never seems to end. Much like the hallways fight scenes on Netflix's "Daredevil", the punches and kicks are well-coordinated and just get more enjoyable as they go. And despite ultra-violence that goes well beyond Peckinpah, Tarantino, or maybe even Miike, in "The Villainess" it never seems gratuitous. There is an art to the whole thing, which may be less surprising once the viewer discovers the assassin's ballet background.

Some viewers may compare the lead character to the Bride from "Kill Bill", which is not altogether off-base. There is also something of a connection to "The Professional" and "La Femme Nikita" (coincidentally both from Luc Besson). But any comparisons will only go so far, because Sook-hee is a character all her own. While she is trained by her assassin school to be a world-class actress or gourmet chef, this only enhances her ability to get the job done when she needs to fight off several thugs on motorcycles while using a katana. Each fight scene manages to dwarf the previous, going so over-the-top you have to wonder how the stunt people and fight choreographer managed to work it all out.

While writer-director Byung-gil Jung is relatively new to film, genre fans will likely recognize his star, OK-bin Kim, from her role in "Thirst" (2009). If she was not already a big deal, this is the perfect showcase for a wide range of talents and on-screen emotions. To say that Sook-hee carries the film would be an understatement. Amazingly, cinematographer Jung-hun Park and editor Sun-mi Heo have practically no other credits to their names. With the impeccable lighting and clever editing to make long shots seem continuous, it boggles the mind how these folks could not have been in the business for years.

If any criticism of the film needed to be made, it would have to be in the lack of real depth. The characters are two-dimensional at best, and most of the plot twists are fairly obvious up front. While this sort of criticism would be correct, it would also be completely beside the point. "Villainess" is a fun movie, and a real popcorn-munching escape. This is not a cerebral tale with any satire or symbolism, but it never pretends to be.

The Fantasia Film Festival picked this visceral action flick to be their 2017 opening picture (July 13). This was a wise choice. Whether or not it will be considered among the best films at this year's festival remains to be seen, but it is easily one of the most satisfying. Nothing puts rabid genre fans in the mood for three weeks of insanity like a fast-paced ninja-themed bloodbath. Standing ovation? You bet! (For those not attending Fantasia, the US rights were purchased by WellGo earlier in 2017, so expect a limited theatrical run and a home video release in the not-too-distant future.)

There's no denying The Villainess has some amazingly inventive and filmed action scenes liberally sprinkling its lengthy running time. Whether they are enough to justify the film's reputed 4 minute standing ovation when presented at the Cannes Film Festival, I'm not sure. The Point Break remake had some exciting action scenes and stunts too and yet they're aren't too many disputing the contention, that it was very much a dud of a film.

Speaking of remakes I'm kind of amazed there doesn't seem to be any formal acknowledgement or credit that The Villainess, like John Badham's 1993 The Assassin (also known as Point of No Return), is a remake of Luc Besson's 1990 film La Femme Nikita. There's simply no repudiating it. Badham's movie gave credit to Besson's and said it was a remake. But strangely writer/director of The Villainess, Jung Byung-gil said he was inspired by La Femme Nikita, whilst giving no onscreen credit (that I could see). In my little corner of the world that's what we generally call "ripping people off".

Any way if you know the plots to the previous films, you'll know the basic storyline of The Villainess. Namely, that a young woman is taken and trained by a shadowy facility associated with South Korea's intelligence agency, into being a sanctioned assassin. The differentiating feature with The Villainess, is the almost infuriatingly complicated back story we are given about Sook-hee, the woman concerned. It is made unnecessarily complex in the long first act, by excessive flash-backing, where we are even given flashbacks, within flashbacks. At times things become nearly incoherent. I actually breathed a sigh of relief during the second act, when Sook-hee goes outside the training school on her first mission and the narrative becomes for a time, more traditionally linear in style, with far less flash backs. Complicating matters further is that the 20 year old Sook-hee we see onscreen almost appears more dangerous than the older trained up Sook-hee we see later. In the somewhat absurd, but dazzlingly choreographed opening , she eliminates a whole rival gang on different storeys of a building, a la The Raid. Yet later, both her and an associate female assassin have trouble with a couple of dudes they're supposed to terminate. There are head-scratching inconsistencies like this right through The Villainess.

Kim Ok-vin in the lead role as Sook-hee is very good, as is her onscreen daughter, Eun-hye, played by Kim Yeon-woo, who is very appealing, as a cute 3-year old. Kim Seo-hyung as Kwon-sook, the head of the training school, also succeeds in a finely tuned ambiguous role, whereby we are never sure of where her loyalties ultimately lie.

The conclusion which follows another hideously kinetic, wholesale gang slaughter and freeway bike and bus chase, very reminiscent of that seen in The Matrix Reloaded, is both thrilling, yet still somewhat confusing, whilst leaving the door ajar for a possible sequel no doubt. To be honest I don't think I'd be interested in it, unless I could be guaranteed that Jung Byung-gil had improved upon his story-telling abilities.

"The Villainess" is a movie with a bravura opening and ending sequence, and a middle which reveals its filmmaker has no idea how to do anything other than bravura sequences. The whole movie couldn't have been like that, apparently - especially not at the idiotic two-hour plus length that it goes on for.

The movie has flashbacks that really add nothing, plastic surgery makeovers that also add nothing except confusion, and a bad guy who changes for no reason I could discern.

It also doesn't evince any sympathy for its protagonist. You want to see her kick butt, sure - but she only does that at the beginning and end of the movie, really. Other than that, you don't care, and I was never really sure who the main bad guy was.

This is a movie that was basically made to be cut up into clips and watched on Youtube, saving everyone's time. Don't bother trying to sit through the whole thing.

It shows that this film was written and directed by novice Byung-gil Jung, and although most of the directing was decent (some was bad), he really failed in the writing department. There were too many convoluted flashbacks that were mainly out of place. The editing was also terrible, as this film needed to be mended much better. The fight scenes where choreographed really well, and the acting was on point, especially from the lead Ok-bin Kim. Had this film been screen-written properly and most of the flashbacks organized and edited correctly, and the 129 min length trimmed down to about 90 or 100 mins, this film would have been great. Still, an impressive production that deserves my 7/10