Writer/director Byung-gil Jung sure knows how to open an action flick. Think Oldboy‘s hallway scene from the first-person perspective of Hardcore Henry spilling over through a non-descript doorway into a wide-open setting for a one-on-twenty bloodbath a la Kill Bill‘s House of Blue Leaves sequence. Only when the orchestrator of this carnage is picked up and shoved headfirst into a mirror does the camera stumble backwards to show Sook-hee’s (Ok-bin Kim) bloodied face and grimace for more. It’s the type of over-the-top, out-of-control set piece most films work towards as a finale nobody will ever forget and we receive it as soon as the lights go down. A breathtaking jump through a window augmented by police sirens in the distance later and this party has only just begun.
If it wasn’t one-take, it was shot to look like it. You become so wrapped up...
If it wasn’t one-take, it was shot to look like it. You become so wrapped up...
- 7/15/2017
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
Director Jung Byung-gil insists that “The Villainess” was made without any reference to preexisting films; that all of its gonzo action was hatched directly from his own demented imagination (with assists from stunt coordinator Kwon Gui-duck and cinematographer Park Jung-hun). And yet the very first scene of the movie busts out of the gate like a female-driven remake of “Hardcore Henry,” Jung immediately launching us into a prolonged first-person sequence in which our avatar slaughters dozens of men in a dingy crystal meth lab. Imagine the hallway fight from “Oldboy,” but three times as long and incalculably more violent (eek, another reference).
This woman murders everybody, fighting them all at least two at a time and leaving no survivors. We know that she’s invincible before we even see her face, and that leaves Jung and fellow screenwriter Byeong-sik Jung with a bit of a problem: They have 120 minutes left...
This woman murders everybody, fighting them all at least two at a time and leaving no survivors. We know that she’s invincible before we even see her face, and that leaves Jung and fellow screenwriter Byeong-sik Jung with a bit of a problem: They have 120 minutes left...
- 7/14/2017
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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