"Let me show you what you've made me into."
— Sook-hee
The Villainess, also known as Aknyeo, is a 2017 action-drama from South Korea, adapting elements from Luc Besson's Nikita and mixing it with its own brand of martial arts action.
The titular "villainess" is Sook-hee, an expert assassin who is forced into working for a government agency. As an agent, she begins life anew, raising her daughter and falling in love with her next-door neighbor. But she is still driven to solve the murders of her father and husband. Those mysteries will come to tragic conclusions.
In January 2019, Deadline Entertainment announced that a TV series produced by Hollywood is in pre-production, directed by Jung Byung-gil.
This movie provides examples of:
- Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: Any of the scenes including Sook-hee's infant daughter Eun-hye, as well as them meeting Hyun-soo and adjusting to their new home in Seoul.
- Action Prologue: The movie opens with Sook-hee massacring an entire gang before being apprehended by the police.
- An Arm and a Leg: During the final fight aboard the speeding bus, Sook-hee chops off the driver's hand to cause it to crash.
- Arc Words: "I want a normal life" or some variation thereof.
- "Back to Camera" Pose: In the poster, assassin heroine Sook-hee stands firm with her back to the audience while holding a gun, showing she is tough. Her face is turned to the side, implying some trials and tribulations coming her way.
- Book Ends: Sook-hee being confronted by the police, while covered in blood, after massacring a group of criminals.
- Broken Bird: Sook-hee, all throughout.
- Broken Smile: The final shot of the movie is Sook-hee smiling maniacally at the police surrounding her.
- Dark Action Girl: Sook-hee, the titular antiheroine/villainess.
- Death of a Child: Sook-hee's daughter is killed by her ex-husband.
- Downer Ending: Sook-hee has her vengeance against Joong-sang but she lost her best friend and her only child in the process, and seems to have embraced her "villainess" role that was forced on her for most of her life and now can never have the normal, happy life she wanted.
- Evil Laugh: Sook-hee gives one at the end, when the police catch her after she murders Joong-sang. The film cuts to the title card as this happens, suggesting she has embraced her nature as a "villainess."
- Expy: There are some similarities Sook-hee has with O-Ren Ishii and the Bride. Like the former, she's a trained assassin who watched her father get murdered (while hiding underneath a bed). Like the latter, she's motivated by her daughter, and ultimately fights and kills the girl's father.
- Gone Horribly Right Joong-sang wanted a badass, merciless assassin, and that's exactly what he got.
- Gory Discretion Shot: The camera leaves Joong-sang out of the frame as Sook-hee kills him with an axe.
- Hallway Fight: Part of the opening sequence includes Sook-hee gunning down mooks inside a corridor as she makes her way to the top.
- Offing the Offspring: Joong-sang doesn't think twice on killing Eun-hye even after Hyun-soo tells him she's his daughter.
- The Oner: The opening and ending fight scenes are filmed in long, nearly-seamless tracking shots.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Sook-hee goes on two of these. The first is to avenge her dead ex-husband, which is ultimately unnecessary, and the other is to avenge her dead husband and daughter, whom the ex-husband killed.
- Slasher Smile: Given by Sook-hee to the police after they catch her murdering Joong-sang.
- Trauma Conga Line: Sook-hee watches her father die as a child, and becomes an assassin to avenge him. She falls in love, only to see her husband be killed. She's captured while avenging him and is made into a government agent against her will. She falls in love and marries her neighbor, who is another agent spying on her. Her best friend in the agency is killed during a mission gone wrong, and her superior blames her for it. She discovers that her former husband is both alive and her father's murderer, and he proceeds to murder her family as well. And for all this, the man says he did this all to her because he could. It's hard to not sympathize with her by the end.
