Ak-Nyeo / The Villainess (2017) - Wasted potential in a bloody mess - 6/10 (26/11/17)

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The Villainess could have been one of this year's greatest movies. The first-person action choreography is absolutely stunning, the characters are interesting to profound and the story is filled with numerous twists and turns. 

However, the movie loses its potential due to a messy script. Instead of telling us the story of the main character in chronological order, the movie starts in the middle of nowhere, shows us numerous flashbacks in random order and meanders in such a vivid manner that more than one viewer will get lost trying to keep track of characters and events. The storytelling tries to be as much over the top as the action sequences when it should be the exact opposite for a balanced experience.

The weird script has a negative impact on everything else that is going on in the film. The action sequences seem randomly inserted in the plodding middle part that feels overlong if compared to the exaggerated sequences in the opening and concluding ten minutes that feel like an overblown video game with plenty of gratuitous violence. The interesting relationships of the main character with her daughter, her father and her neighbour are losing depth because they are constantly interrupted by shifts in place and time. The main character herself also starts to act strangely, behaving like a cold-blooded killing machine in one scene and like a confused, crying and hesitating emotional wreck just one minute later.

Another thing that bothered me were the numerous killing sequences. I'm familiar with quite bloody and gory films and I do appreciate some of them but certain sequences in this film feel just gratuitous. About fifty people get killed by the main character in the first ten minutes and they all look like dummies without any skills. The thing that makes other vivid action movies such as The Raid so interesting is that there were some serious opponents that could cause the main character some serious trouble. In this movie, our villainess acts like a unstoppable schizophrenic superhero gone crazy. Another element I disliked is that the young child dies a quite brutal death after having already witnessed a series of cruel actions and that the director shows us her bruised face like a broken porcelain doll. I'm a tough guy but that's definitely going too far. Killing the husband would have been sufficient to trigger the main character's final rampage. Showing the bloodied body of a murdered child that can barely talk and walk is disgusting. 

In the end, I must say that The Villainess is a disappointing film. It's not outrageously bad but I have rarely watched a movie that sounded so promising on paper but ended up being so messy on screen. I still have to give a generous rating because the film has so many glorious ideas and could have been a masterpiece with a better script. However, I can't recommend this movie to anyone. Those who are looking for pitiless action sequences have to sit through one hour and a half of romantic slices of life interwoven with random flashbacks. Those who are interested in an actual story will get gratuitous violence and a puzzle that is too hard to solve. Those who just want to switch their brains off and have some fun will get shaken up by the unnecessary death of the child.

I've never ever been a fan of remakes but this movie should get one with a better director and script to achieve this film's full potential.