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The Villainess (Korean: 악녀, romanized: Ak Nyeo) is a 2017 South Korean action film directed by Jung Byung-gil, starring Kim Ok-vin.[2] The film had its world premiere at the 70th Cannes Film Festival in May 2017.[3][4][5]

The Villainess
Film poster
Hangul	악녀
Hanja	惡女
Revised Romanization	Aknyeo
Directed by	Jung Byung-gil
Written by	Jung Byung-gil Jung Byeong-sik
Produced by	Moon Young-hwa
Starring	Kim Ok-vin Shin Ha-kyun
Cinematography	Park Jung-hoon
Edited by	Heo Sun-mi
Music by	Koo Ja-wan
Production company	Independent Filmmakers Group BFG
Distributed by	Next Entertainment World
Release dates	May 21, 2017 (2017-05-21) (Cannes) June 8, 2017 (2017-06-08) (South Korea) August 25, 2017 (2017-08-25) (United States)
Running time	129 minutes
Country	South Korea
Language	Korean
Box office	US$8.8 million[1]

According to the director and writer, the movie was inspired by the European film La Femme Nikita (1990), which he had seen at the age of 10.[6][7]

Plot

Sook-hee is a highly skilled assassin, who enters a hallway and kills numerous people before being surrounded by the cops, where she is drugged and taken to South Korea's intelligence agency, where they provide her with a plastic surgery. To give her a new start, they also fake her death and assign her a new name: Chae Yeon-soo. Yeon-soo tells that she does not care to live, but they tell her she is pregnant and offer her to train herself as their agent, in exchange for her freedom. Yeon-soo accepts where she gives birth to a daughter named Eun-hye. The agency's leader Kwon-sook, sends Yeon-soo on her first assignment. Sook-hae learns that the target she killed turns out to be the father of a young girl. This triggers her haunted memories of her past. A 7 year old Sook-hee had witnessed her father getting killed, while hidden under the bed.

Due to circumstances, she was trained as a killing machine by an assassin named Lee Joong-sang. After many years, a 20 year-old Sook-hae tried to kill Jang-Chun, who assumes that he is responsible for her father's death. However, she is captured and while beating her, Jang-Chun confesses that he did not kill her father. Joong-sang arrived, where he shot him and freed Sook-hee. Sook-hee and Joong-sang fell in love and got married, where she tells that she was willing to let go of her thirst for vengeance if she can get married and live a normal life. Seeing that his trained assassin would no longer be useful, Joong-sang sets up an act. While on their honeymoon, he faked an act of saving a gang member called Choi Chun-Mo and staged his own death. When Sook-hee learns about Joong-sang's death, she lost her mind and gone on a killing rampage, where she took out a whole gang that was known to hate Joong-sang. Joong-sang expected her to die by killing his rivals, but they are no match to her.

In the present time, Yeon-soo completes her first assignment, where she is provided with an apartment to share with Eun-hye. Unknown to Yeon-soo, Kwon-sook places an agent in the apartment next door, who is Jung Hyun-soo. Hyun-soo is to befriend Yeon-soo and provide updates about her activities. While on a mission with another agent Min-ju, Yeon-soo is caught stealing a phone. In the ensuing fight, Min-ju is killed and the stolen phone has documents about Choi Chun-Mo and the agency is worried that since Yeon-soo knows about him, they assume her to be a double agent. Hyun-soo comforts her and they soon falls for each other. 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. During the wedding, Yeon-soo aims a rifle out a window and to her astonishment, finds out her target is Joong-sang.

Yeon-soo fails to kill Joong-sang, who orders to backtrack the location from which the shots came and identifies Yeon-soo as Sook-hee. Joong-song 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 about Eun-hye being Joong-sang's daughter, hoping for all the killing to stop. Joong-sang tells that he doesn't care and plants a bomb near them. As Yeon-soo reaches her apartment, the bomb explodes, killing Hyun-soo and Eun-hye. Enraged, Yeon-soo tracks down Joong-sang to a parking garage and kills 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, where she catches up and makes the bus to crash. Yeon-soo finally kills Jeong-sang with an axe, where she smiles with a grim smile after being surrounded by the cops.

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 Philippines.[8] Later it was sold to additional territories which includes Japan, China, Singapore, India increasing to a total of 136 countries worldwide.[9]

Reception

The Villainess received a four-minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival.[10] 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.[11]

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."[12] Review aggregator website Metacritic gave the film a rating of 64 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[13]

Awards and nominations

Award	Category	Recipient	Result	Ref.
16th New York Asian Film Festival	Daniel E. Craft Award for Excellence in Action Cinema	The Villainess	Won	[14]
21st Fantasia International Film Festival	GURU Prize for Best Action Feature Film		Silver	[15]
26th Buil Film Awards	Best Actress	Kim Ok-bin	Nominated	[16]
	Best Cinematography	Park Jung-hoon	Won
1st The Seoul Awards	Best Actress	Kim Ok-bin	Nominated	[17]
	Best Supporting Actress	Kim Seo-hyung	Nominated
54th Grand Bell Awards	Best Actress	Kim Ok-bin	Nominated	[18]
	Best Lighting	Lee Hae-won	Nominated
	Best Cinematography	Park Jung-hoon	Won
	Best Editing	Heo Sun-mi	Nominated
	Technical Award	The Villainess	Won
38th Blue Dragon Film Awards	Best Cinematography and Lighting		Nominated	[19]
	Best Technical Achievement - Stunts		Won
	Best Actress	Kim Ok-bin	Nominated
18th Busan Film Critics Awards	Technical Award	Park Jung-hoon	Won	[20]
		Kwon Kwi-deok	Won
54th Baeksang Arts Awards	Best Actress	Kim Ok-bin	Nominated	[21]
23rd Chunsa Film Art Awards			Won	[22]

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.[23]

References

External links

• The Villainess at HanCinema
• The Villainess at IMDb

На других языках

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- [en] The Villainess

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[ru] Злодейка (фильм, 2017)

«Злодейка» (кор. 악녀) — южнокорейский боевик режиссёра Чон Пён Гиля. Премьера прошла на Каннском кинофестивале в 2017 году.

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