The Villainess: It's Not The Cards You're Dealt

From it’s opening tone-setting, almost First Person Shooter perspective bloody action sequence that overstays it’s welcome, to it’s similarly ambitious yet a little too shaky action packed resolution, my prevailing sentiment after experiencing The Villainess is that it’s strength lies in it’s ability to tell it’s story. While it’s narrative is not especially original, it’s in its non-linear ambitions and how it delivers its cryptic uncertainty that it elevates itself above a mutually intelligible action thriller with lesser ambitions. While it’s admirable cinematographic aspirations, particularly during the well-choreographed action scenes, sometimes hits and more often misses, it’s top notch editing, stellar acting, and hard hitting musical score allows it to rise above the more derivative and mid-tier works of Korean action cinema.

Directed and written by Jung Byung-gil, is best experienced with as little information as possible going into it, so in the interest of respecting the film’s ambiguity as well as the first time viewers, I will try to keep the synopsis as minimal as possible while still being able to at least explain what the film’s central plot line is. 

Sook-hee is honed from childhood to be an assassin. She finds herself at the center of a morally grey organizational scuffle and embarks on a vengeful rampage to earn her freedom and move forward with her life.

While its setup may not be particularly unique, as I mentioned from the top, the devil is more in the details than anywhere else. Its non-linear story structure is told in a very smart and cryptic manner with a steady hand on just how much it’s willing to tell you at any given moment. It never shows it’s hand too heavily and it doesn’t ever feel improperly or poorly sequenced, which is a pitfall many narratives that have similarly structured ambitions fall headfirst into. Sook-hee’s history is given to the viewer in a manner that ensures we are aware of how her past is informing her present, not in a broad sense, but particularly that moment of her life correlates to the previous one. I’m not sure I’d go as far to say it’s a character study, but it’s definitely a valid interpretation. It is able to rise above the influences that it so proudly wears on its sleeve to deliver itself as it wants to be for better and for worse. And in that unapologetic auteurist creative energy there will always be a space for the respect and passion of its vision.

How the film is shot however hits or misses depending on the scene, in particular the action scenes. Some, such as the motorcycle chase has the quality to match its ambition combined with its aforementioned pinpoint editing that is a staple throughout the film, often transitioning from one scene to another seemingly in the same cut. However other occurrences, while still impeccably edited feel a little too wild by comparison with more moments of incomprehensibility than I would usually prefer. While each action sequence feels unique and never retread throughout the film, which is an impressive feat given just how many there are, many of them have a distinctly warped feeling to them due to what I’ve been told is a wider lens being used.

The musical score is an ode to the best of famed Hong Kong action cinema. The raw, organic, driving percussive slaps and instrumentation provides a hectic and breakneck tempo for our protagonist to take care of her business. These streets have seen this kind of violence before but they’ve never felt it quite like this. Each kick and punch on each and every loud and unrestrained wack filled with confusion and uninhibited rage of a passionate love and a driving desire to be more and do more. Momentarily uninhibited from the shadowy chains that bind her and those she loves. It’s more than just a fight, it’s a chance to express and stretch and be more than the caged animal.

But when it is quiet, when the brief moments of excitement and bombastic energy is brought to simmer as we await Sook-hee's next assignment we feel cordoned off from the world we are apparently working in the best interest of. The sinister isolation coming from not just who is looking for her, but who is looking out for her. The trials that brought her to this point, physical and mental, as the curtain is ever so slightly lifted one painful inch at a time. And while it attempts to balance its overflowing emotional cocktail on its pinky toe, you’d be surprised how much liquid it is able to keep in its glass. Visual darkness mixed with a volatile chemical imbalance brings it close to the sun ever so often, but its burns are not lethal. It keeps us disoriented at the cost of the potential resonance it could have had from a pure written narrative perspective. But it is a sacrifice The Villainess clearly wants to make and it is worthy of respect for that creative choice.

While the film doesn’t lean too heavily into its thematic intentions to derive a pointed or comprehensive message that does mean that we can’t derive valuable meaning from it nor that such meaning does not exist. In this case, it is how conglomerates and collectives that oversee our wellbeing see fit to control every aspect of our lives to the point where they feel that they own us and will keep us from living the life we so desperately want to, not the one that they thrust us into. Quite literally making us out to be their own personal property potentially leading us to do things that we don’t necessarily want to, for them or ourselves. Their rising power lead them to imply covertly or blatantly that they know best for us and what we want when they should be there for us. If they’re going to overstep our boundaries, we’ll overstep theirs too. 

While the action thriller cinema of the 2010s has been branded stale and uninspired by comparison, it’s important not to cast all of them by the wayside as bland padding green-lit by money grubbing studio executives. Don’t miss the forest for the trees. The Villainess proves itself to be a worthwhile endeavor to anyone disillusioned with the genre in recent times and one that is well worth it’s 2 hour run-time. While it has its shortcomings they are certainly outweighed by all of the good that it is able to achieve. it is an impressive effort from all involved.