geezer cinema: the villainess (jung byung-gil, 2017)

One of those cases where it pays to read the IMDB Parents Guide in advance:

 

Violence & Gore: Severe

There are several fight scenes throughout the movie. We see bullet wounds, stabbing etc and blood gushing continuously.
Copious amounts of blood sprays from wounds during seamless and prolonged scenes of combat. Impalement is common along with creative ways to strangle, smash, hack and bleed people from innumerable angles.
A Man lies in a pool of blood and smiles at his daughter before being hit with a sledgehammer in the side of his head. Blood sprays on the girl's face.
A man's hand is severed with a hatchet, spraying blood around the inside of a bus while screaming in pain.

Which I suppose is another way of reminding us that this is a Korean movie. There are plenty of good things about The Villainess. Director Jung Byung-gil has a real flair for action, and he used new, tiny cameras to achieve some mind-bending cinematography (Park Jung-hun is the cinematographer). Kim Ok-vin (Thirst), who I think plays the title character (the plot is, shall we say, confusing), is terrific in the action scenes (she is a legit martial artist as well as an actor).

But outside of the action set pieces, The Villainess drags. The basic plot is simple enough ... think the various permutations of Nikita ... but the explanation(s) for the behavior of The Villainess are so messy, the movie ends up relying too much on flashbacks that are supposed to clarify things. It's a two-hour movie that could be even better at an hour-and-a-half.

Still, it's hard to argue with those action scenes ... well, they are so indiscriminately brutal you either get desensitized or you quit watching (if you started in the first place). Your mileage may vary, is what I'm trying to say.