THE VILLAINESS

The Villainess begins with the classical situation of a professional killer who wants to “retire” – an assassin who tries to make a new life for herself out of love, but ends up ensnared by a past from which she can’t escape. A familiar storyline, to be sure, but the director Jung Byung-gil to delivers a highly polished movie. The opening scene and its bloodbath shot as a first-person POV literally astounded the Cannes audience at a memorable midnight screening. And The Villainess has plenty of superb bits of bravura for fans of uninhibited action cinema.

If it’s true that every story has already been told, one can always rely on Korean cinema to find new ways of telling them.