The Villainess

The Villainess is a 2017 South Korean action thriller film directed by Jung Byung-gil, starring Kim Ok-vin. The film had its world premiere at the 70th Cannes Film Festival in May 2017.
According to Jung, the movie was inspired by La Femme Nikita by Luc Besson, which he had seen at the age of 10.
Plot
Sook-hee, a highly skilled assassin, enters a hallway and kills numerous people before being surrounded by cops and smiling. Later, Sook-Hee is drugged and taken to South Korea's intelligence agency, who provide her plastic surgery. To give her a new start, they also fake her death and assign her a new name: Chae Yeon-soo.
Yeon-soo learns that she is pregnant, and the agency's leader, Kwon-sook, offers her freedom if she trains with them and works as their agent for ten years. She accepts and while in training, gives birth to a daughter, Eun-hye. Having completed her first assignment, Yeon-soo is given an apartment to share with her daughter. Unknown to Yeon-soo, Kwon-sook places an agent named Jung Hyun-soo in the apartment next door, who is to befriend Yeon-soo and keep tabs on her. After a few meetings, Yeon-soo and Hyun-soo fall for each other. Later, Yeon-soo is sent on her first "assignment". The target she kills turns out to be the father of a young girl. This triggers the memories of her past
Past: A 7 year old Sook-Hee witnesses her father's death but does not get a look at the killer's face; she only hears him whistling. Years later, Sook-Hae tries to kill Jang-Chun, a man with yellow teeth, believing him to be the killer, but gets captured and beaten. While beating her, Jang-Chun tells her he did not kill her father. He eventually sells Sook-hee to a prostitution ring. She is about to be assaulted by a client when someone named Lee Joong-sang arrives and rescues her, while also killing Jang-Chun.
Joong-sang decides to train Sook-hee to be a killing machine, and she becomes devoted to him. The two eventually get married. Sook-hee is willing to let go of her thirst for revenge if she can live a normal life with him. Seeing his trained assassin would no longer be of much use, Joong-sang sets up an act. While on their honeymoon, he fakes saving a gang member called Choi Chun-Mo and stages his own death. When Sook-hee learns about Joong-sang's "death", she goes on a killing rampage and takes out a whole gang that was known to hate Joong-sang. Joong-sang expects her to die killing his rivals, but they end up being no match to her.
Present: While on a mission with another agent named Min-ju, Yeon-soo is caught stealing a phone. Min-ju is killed in the ensuing fight. The stolen phone contains documents about Choi Chun-Mo and the agency is worried that since Yeon-soo knew him, she may be a double-agent. Hyun-soo comforts her and this brings them closer together. The agency wants Yeon-soo to kill her next target from a wedding catering company, so they arrange a wedding between her and Hyun-soo. Aiming her rifle out a window, Yeon-soo finds out her target is Joong-sang.
Shocked that he is still alive, she fails to kill him. Joong-sang backtracks the location from which he was attacked and identifies Yeon-soo as Sook-hee. He meets with her and reveals that Hyun-soo is actually an undercover agent. Joong-sang's gang meets Hyun-soo and Eun-hye. Hyun-soo reveals that Eun-hye is, in fact, Joong-sang's daughter, hoping for all the killings to stop. However, Joong-sang does not care about this revelation and plants a bomb near them. While reaching her apartment, Yeon-soo watches the bomb go off. Hyun-soo and her daughter die.
Consumed with revenge, Yeon-soo tracks down Joong-sang to a parking garage and kills many of his men. She confronts Joong-sang, who escapes to the street and meets with his remaining henchmen. They all speed off in a shuttle bus. Yeon-soo chases after them, boards the bus and holds an axe over Joong-sang's head. He puts his head down and starts whistling the same tune she heard when her father died, revealing that Joong-sang is his killer. Yeon-soo kills him with the axe. Before walking out of the wreckage with the police surrounding her, Yeon-soo smiles.
Cast
Kim Ok-vin as Sook-hee / Chae Yeon-soo
Min Ye-ji as young Sook-hee
Shin Ha-kyun as Lee Joong-sang
Sung Joon as Jung Hyun-soo
Kim Seo-hyung as Kwon-sook
Jo Eun-ji as Kim Sun
Lee Seung-joo as Choon-mo
Son Min-ji as Min-joo
Kim Yeon-woo as Eun-hye
Cameo
Jung Hae-kyun as Jang Chun
Park Chul-min as Sook-hee's father
Kim Hye-na as training female rookie
Release
The Villainess was released in South Korean cinemas on June 8, 2017.
According to the distributor Next Entertainment World the film was sold prior to the local release to 115 countries including North America, South America, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, Taiwan and the Philippines. Later it was sold to additional territories which includes Japan, China, Singapore, India increasing to a total of 136 countries worldwide.
Reception
The Villainess received a four-minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival.
The film was also screened at the 16th New York Asian Film Festival which was held from June 30 to July 16, 2017. At the festival, the film received the Daniel E. Craft Award for Excellence in Action Cinema.
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 84% based on 85 reviews with an average rating of 6.84/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Villainess offers enough pure kinetic thrills to satisfy genre enthusiasts -- and carve out a bloody niche for itself in modern Korean action cinema." Review aggregator website Metacritic gave the film a rating of 64 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Awards and nominations
TV series
In July 2021, it was announced a TV series based on the film is in development with Amazon with writer Francisca Hu writing and executive producing the pilot.
References
External links
2017 films
South Korean action thriller films
2017 action thriller films
Next Entertainment World films
Girls with guns films
South Korean films about revenge
Films shot from the first-person perspective
Films directed by Jeong Byeong-gil
2010s South Korean films