Thrilling, though flawed, action tour de force

KILLING is second nature to Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin), a slender young woman with porcelain skin, ice in her veins and an unshakeable determination to exact revenge on her loved one's murderers. No matter that they outnumber her by many dozens to one because she's been taught, um, bloody well.

The long pre-credits sequence of The Villainess is a tour de force of vicious, over-the-top action seen from Sook-hee's point of view as she roams the dimly-lit corridors of a grim industrial building, dispatching a small army of gangsters with ruthless efficiency. When her ammunition runs out and she loses her last handgun, she unsheathes twin swords and continues the carnage, scything through flesh and bone with no compunction.

The action scenes are reminiscent of vintage John Woo movies like The Killer (1989) and A Better Tomorrow (1986), but the film The Villainess mostly takes its inspiration from is La Femme Nikita (1990), Luc Besson's much-reworked treatise on the transformation of a young girl into a steely-eyed assassin.