Parky at the Pictures (DVD 2/5/2019)

Four year-old Kun (Moka Kamishiraishi) plays with the family dog, Yukko, in the house designed by his architect father (Gen Hoshino). His grandmother (Yoshiko Miyazaki) is minding him, while his mother, Yumi (Kumiko Aso), gives birth to his baby sister, Mirai, Having been spoilt rotten, Kun finds it difficult to share his mother and acts up when he doesn't get enough attention. Father is also finding the transition to house husband difficult and Yumi reminds him that he will have to do his bit now that there are two children to look after. 

Frustrated at having to play by himself, Kun hits Mirai with one of his toy trains and he accuses Yumi of being an ugly old hag when she reprimands him. He stomps into the courtyard, which seems to transform into a ruined abbey as a well-dressed stranger (Mitsuo Yoshihara) appears from behind the tree. Introducing himself as the prince of the household, the man explains how he was once the apple of Mother and Father's eyes and he deeply resented Kun when he stole his limelight. But he learned to accept the newcomer and suggests that Kun does the same with Mirai. When the prince shows an unexpected interest in Yukko's squeaky ball, Kun realises that he is the dog in human form and yanks off his tail and attaches it to himself to go yomping around the house, much to the bemusement of his parents. 

After three months, Grandma and Grandpa pay a visit and Kun clamours for their attention when they try to take pictures of Mirai. They notice that the baby has a red birthmark on her right hand, but Yumi insists it is nothing to worry about. She has placed a collection of dolls on a sideboard in order to ensure that Mirai finds a good husband. They discuss the Doll Ceremony over lunch and Kun gets bored. When Yumi returns to work, she reminds her husband to put the dolls away before the end of the day or Mirai's marriage prospects will be compromised. 

Bored at being left to play alone, Kun covers his sleeping sisters face with whale cookies before wandering into the courtyard. Once again, the enclosed area undergoes a transformation and Kun finds himself in a giant domed greenhouse. He follows a trail of whale cookies and bumps into the teenage Mirai (Haru Kuroki), who chides him for being so mean to her. Kun protests that he can't help disliking her, but he agrees to remind Father to put away the dolls to ensure she can marry the man of her dreams. However, he is too preoccupied with work to pay attention and Mirai sends Kun to distract him while she and the Prince pack away the dolls according to the ritual. This proves trickier than they had anticipated, however, and a baton held by the emperor doll gets stuck to Father's trouser leg and they have to sneak up on him to retrieve it. 

When their mission is accomplished, Mirai asks Kun if he is better disposed towards her and he shruggingly admits to thinking she's okay for a girl. But he soon gets cross with baby Mirai again when Yumi dotes on her during a rare day off after showing him some old photograph albums. Strutting into the courtyard in high dudgeon, Kun discovers it has changed into a vast underwater valley and a shoal of fish sweep him away from the scolding teenage Mirai to deposit him on a rain-soaked street that he doesn't recognise. He sees a young girl crying on the opposite pavement and discovers Yumi at his age. She is writing a note pleading with her mother to let her have a cat and she explains how she always gets her own way with both her parents and her younger brother. 

They head back to her family home, where she tips out all her sibling's toys so that Kun can play. She also treats him to some snacks in the kitchen before leading him on a merry dance of destruction around the house. When she hears her mother return, however, Yumi ushers Kun outside and he listens in some distress as a blazing row ensues, in which Yumi begs for forgiveness and promises not to be so naughty in the future. 

As Kun keeps dreaming during his afternoon nap, Yumi chats with her mother in the kitchen. She admits she had been a wilful child and only became house-proud after she got married. Her mother teases her about being a pest as a girl and jokes that Kun is very like her with his tantrums. Yumi hopes she can be a good mother and, when Kun wakes up to see her sleeping with Mirai on the couch next to him, he pats her head and a single tear trickles down her cheek when he tells her that she's a good girl. 

Father takes Kun and Mirai to the park for fresh air. Kun sees other boys riding their bicycles without stabilisers and asks if his can be removed. However, when Father tries to teach him how to balance on the grass, Kun keeps toppling over and he loses his temper when Father rushes back to the bench because Mirai has started crying. Flouncing into the courtyard, Kun finds himself in a workshop full of large engines. A man with a limp (Koji Yakusho) explains that they were built for aeroplanes during the war and he takes Kun to a nearby stable and offers to take him for a ride on horseback. Despite his misgivings, Kun enjoys the sensation and is soon speeding along on a motorbike with the stranger, who bears a curious resemblance to his father. 

The next time they go to the park, Kun manages to ride alone and the bigger boys invite him to play with him. Father is proud of him and tells Yumi what a hero he was. She compliments him on getting better at nursing Mirai and Father wells up, as he realises how magical family life can be. Turning the pages of the photo album, Kun recognises the man who had taught him so much and Yumi is amused when he confuses him with his father. She reveals that he is Kun's great-grandfather, who had built aero engines before being injured while serving in the navy. He had worked in a motorcycle factory and had only died the previous year. But Kun sees the connection and remains grateful to the man in the picture and his dad for helping him conquer his fears. 

Kun's contentment doesn't last long, however, and he throws a strop over a pair of shorts when Mother and Father have too much else on to cope with his mood. Deciding to run away, Kun hides in the bath and a wardrobe before packing a bag and strutting into the courtyard. This morphs into a country station and Kun ignores the advice of a youth in the waiting room and boards a train. He is excited to see the full-size versions of all his toy engines and is particularly thrilled to see a bullet train, as they arrive in Tokyo. But he finds the station a frightening place and becomes frustrated when the man at the Lost and Found booth keeps asking questions about his family that he can't answer. 

Dispatched to catch the service to Lonely Land, Kun refuses to get on board and has to race the length of the platform to prevent Mirai from crawling through the sliding doors. As he recovers from his tumble, he sees a hand with Mirai's birthmark reaching out to him and she plucks him into the air and they land in a tree top. However, this is the family tree and they see episodes from the past that brought them to this point in time: Father falling off his bike; Mother tending to a baby bird that had been mauled by a cat; Yukko saying goodbye to his mother as a puppy; and Great-Grandfather swimming ashore after his ship was bombed and later racing against the woman who would become his wife after she let him win so that he would propose to her. 

Mirai (whose name means `the Future') explains that lives are the sum of such small incidents and accidents and Kun returns to the present with a valuable lesson learned. As his parents pack the car for a holiday, they muse on how their children have made them better people. Kun sees Mirai in their playroom and they share his banana before he teaches her how to shout and they smile at each other and a lifelong bond is forged.

Repurposing Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol to teach a self-centred brat to appreciate the people around him, this may not be Hosoda's most ambitious storyline. But, named as it is after his own daughter, it's undoubtedly his most personal and accessible and tweenage viewers should be able to follow the English-language version easily enough. Much of the anime that reaches this country is primarily aimed at adult audiences, however, and new parents will find this intimate tale particularly relevant. 

As always with Hosoda, the graphics are sensational. The aerial views of Kun's town are splendidly detailed, while the different portal sites for his flights of fancy are charmingly atmospheric. A couple of sequences linger overlong, with the Doll Ceremony episode being teased out to a feeble punchline, while the sequence at the mainline station drifts between thrill and terror without creating sufficient awe or dread. The tumble through the family tree similarly feels less momentous than it should. Some of the close-ups of Kun and Mirai crying and laughing also feel a little gauche. But, with the aid of Masakatsu Takagi's jaunty score, the shifts in time and tone are otherwise handled with a dexterity that reflects Hosoda's insights into the minds of his toddling protagonist and his stressed parents.

A quarter of a century has passed since Lee Chang-dong broke into films with his screenplays for Park Kwang-su's To the Starry Island (1993) and A Single Spark (1995). He made his directorial debut with Green Fish (1997) before making a mark on the festival circuit with Peppermint Candy (2000) and Oasis (2002). However, he cemented his reputation as one of South Korea's leading auteurs with Secret Sunshine (2007) and Poetry (2010), which respectively earned Jeon Do-yeon the Best Actress Prize at Cannes and presented the iconic Yoon Jeong-hee (who was part of the so-called 1960s `troika' with Moon Hee and Nam Jeong-im) her first screen role in 15 years. 

Now, Lee has produced another remarkable role for an actress (the debuting Jeon Jong-seo) in Burning, a loose adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story, `Barn Burning', that also contains echoes of William Faulkner's 1939 vignette of the same name. Co-scripted by regular writing partner, Oh Jung-mi, this slow-tapering mystery for three persons and a Schrödinger cat proves teasingly elusive and intriguingly ambiguous. Marking Lee's first film in eight years, it's already a racing certainty for the end-of-year Top 10 and one can only hope that there won't be such a lengthy interval before Lee's next masterpiece. 

Driver Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) is making a delivery in downtown Seoul when he is recognised by shop promotions girl Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-soo). She remembers him from school in Paju and claims he won't know her because she has had plastic surgery. While chatting, she gives him a raffle ticket and he wins a cheap plastic watch, which he gives to her while they have a cigarette break. He reveals his ambition to become a writer and she persuades him to meet her for a drink after work.

They sip beer in a bar, where Hae-mi asks Jong-su to look after her cat while she is visiting Africa. She peels an imaginary tangerine and tells him about the Kalahari Bushmen using the term `Great Hunger' to describe their eagerness for life experience and Jong-su agrees to cat-sit, even though he has to visit his farmer father, Yong-seok (Choi Seung-ho), who has been charged with assaulting a policeman. Lugging his bags, he drops into Hae-mi's bedsit to meet Boil. But there is no sign of the cat and he jokes that it's a figment of Hae-mi's imagination. She insists that she rescued the creature from the basement and claims that it shies away from strangers. The same can't be said for Hae-mi, however, who seduces Jong-su and he notices a shard of sunlight on the wall of the tiny room when they make love. 

Jong-su takes a bus to the farm and arrives in a downpour. The house is deserted and Jong-su feels sorry for a forlorn cow in the barn. During the course of his brief stay, the phone rings a couple of times, but there is no one at the other end when he picks up. While a news bulletin touches on youth unemployment and the secrets behind Donald Trump's rise to power, Jong-su listens to a loudspeaker broadcasting propaganda from behind the nearby North Korean border. 

He returns to Seoul in his father's van, but there is no sign of Boil when he goes to feed it. The litter tray has been used, however, and Jong-su feels the urge to masturbate, as he looks out of the window at the N Tower. He attends Yong-seok's court hearing and the lawyer (Mun Seong-kun) urges him to talk some sense into his stubborn father so that he can be released from prison. However, Jong-su is more interested in the fact that Hae-mi is due to return from Kenya and he agrees to meet her at the airport. 

He is dismayed to discover that she has travelled with Ben (Steven Yeun), a wealthy Korean she befriended during a delay at Nairobi Airport and they whisk him off to eat tripe stew and listen to Hae-mi's account of her adventures. She gets tearful recalling the slow disappearance of a sunset and Ben claims that he has never cried in his life. When Jong-su asks what he does for a living, he smiles that he plays because there's no longer any difference between work and leisure. He inquires about Jung-so's favourite author and seems unimpressed when he cites William Faulkner. However, he jokes that he might hire Jung-so to write his life story before a factotum shows up with the keys to his Porsche and he drives Hae-mi home, leaving Jong-su to return to the farm and another silent phone call.

He drafts a petition for the court, but the neighbours are reluctant to sign because Yong-seok was grumpy and kept to himself. However, the moment Hae-mi calls, Jong-su jumps on a train to the capital and he is frustrated to find that she is still hanging around with Ben. He invites them to his apartment for pasta and Jong-su notices lots of female accoutrements in the bathroom. While smoking on the balcony, he compares Ben to Jay Gatsby and says there are a lot of idle rich in Korea, while people like him have to scrape to make a living. After supper, they go to a nightclub, where Ben shows off Hae-mi to his friends, only for Jong-su to catch him yawning when she gives a demonstration of a Kalahari `hunger' dance. 

Returning to Paju, Jung-so is cleaning out the calf shed when Hae-mi calls to say she is going to visit with Ben. As she gazes over the fields, she reminds Jung-so of the time he saved her from a well (although he clearly has no recollection of any such incident) and she claims to feel at home when she wanders inside the ramshackle farmhouse. They smoke a joint after supper and Hae-mi peels off her top to dance at dusk, with her hands resembling a bird in flight. However, she passes out and they carry her to the sofa. 

Left alone with Ben, Jong-su confesses to hating his father and the rages that cause him to destroy everything around him. He reveals that he had helped him burn his mother's clothing after she had abandoned him and his sister and this prompts Ben to admit to torching greenhouses as a hobby. Piqued that Ben feels he has a right to destroy other people's property, Jong-su says he shouldn't be able to decide whether a building still has a purpose. But Ben insists he is free to do what he likes and hints that he has his eyes on a structure very close to where they are sitting. 

At that moment, Hae-mi joins them and sleepily stretches as the sun comes up. She announces she wants to go home and Jong-su (who has just told Ben that he loves her) whispers in her ear that only whores bare themselves in front of men. Silently, she climbs into the passenger seat and Ben drives away, while reminding Jong-su to keep an eye out for suitable greenhouses to destroy. Having dozed off, Jong-su dreams of his younger self watching a plastic greenhouse burning fiercely and he smiles at the red-hot flames. On waking, he discovers that Ben has left his lighter behind. 

Anxious at not hearing from Hae-mi, Jong-su goes to her bedsit to find that the code has been changed on her door. He tours some of the market gardens near to the farm and peers into some of the sheeting incubators to see if he can spot her. When he persuades her landlady to open the door, however, he discovers that the room has been tidied and that the cat food has been removed from a cupboard. She suggests that Hae-mi has gone on another trip, but he finds her pink suitcase in the bathroom and suspects that something sinister has happened and that Ben has harmed her in the same way he does a greenhouse that has outlived its usefulness. 

While searching for Hae-mi, Jong-su also keeps an eye on the greenhouses near the farm to check whether Ben has torched one. He uses the lighter to set fire to a loose strip of plastic and is shocked by how quickly it burns before damping it out. On following Ben's car to a restaurant in his trendy neighbourhood, Jong-su is equally dismayed by his dismissive attitude to Hae-mi's disappearance. Ben is reading a copy of Faulkner's Collected Stories and he asks Jong-su if he has made any progress with his novel. A girl joins them and Ben wanders out to his car. He confides that he had felt jealous when Hae-mi had confided that Jong-su was the only person she trusted in the entire world, but he also scoffs at the idea she has gone on a trip because he knows she was broke. As he leaves, Ben also suggests that she was entirely alone and one of the saddest people he knows. 

Wondering whether her mother (Cha Mi-kyung) or sister (Lee Bong-ryeon) might have heard from Hae-mi, Jong-su goes to their noodle shop. Her mother declares that she won't be welcomed home until she pays off her debts. Moreover, she also denies that her daughter ever fell in a well and warns Jong-su about falling for her fantasies and fibs. Nevertheless, Jong-su tours the local farms to ask if any has a well and keeps following Ben wherever he goes, even to mass. At one point, they find themselves alongside each other in a Seoul traffic jam, while Jong-su crouches yards away from Ben after he drives into the country to gaze across a tranquil lake.

Out of the blue, Jong-su receives a call from his mother (San Hye-ra), who spends much of their meeting checking her phone, even though they haven't seen each other for 16 years. She does confirm, however, that there was a dried-up well at Hae-mi's place. Renewing his vigil at Ben's place, Jong-su is dismayed when he knocks on the van window and invites him to join his friends for a pot-luck party. He is surprised to see that Ben has a cat and even more taken aback to find Hae-mi's cheap plastic watch in the bathroom drawer full of knick-knacks. 

One of the guests allows the cat to escape and Jong-su helps search the underground car park. When he finds the cat cowering in the corner, he calls it `Boil' and it trots over to him with a miaow. Bored by the conversation about the way Chinese and Koreans treat money and each other, Ben yawns and smiles at Jong-su across the room. He follows him down to the van and urges him to stop being so serious and start enjoying life, so that he feels the deep bass of existence in his chest. But Jong-su doesn't know whether to trust Ben or not. Is he so shallow or is he so careless that another person's life is as meaningless as a greenhouse.

When his father is sentenced to 18 months, Jong-su sells the calf and moves into Hae-mi's bedsit. He imagines her spooning him on the bed and tries to write. But he can't focus and arranges to meet Ben on an icy morning on a remote road near some greenhouses. He asks about Hae-mi and, when Ben fails to answer, Jong-su stabs him repeatedly and bundles his body into the front seat of the Porsche. Dousing the vehicle with petrol, he strips naked and tosses his bloody clothes inside before sparking the lighter. Shaking and sobbing with conflicted emotions at his crime, he drives away. 

Depending entirely upon the viewer's response to the tensions between Jong-su and Ben, this will either be a simmering insight into class envy in post-millennial society or a fascinatingly flawed exercise in unsustained suspense. The significance of Hae-mi is equally debatable, with some seeing her as little more than a MacGuffin, while others have identified her as a symbol of the status of women in South Korean society. Whatever one reads into the action and the characters, however, there is no denying that this is an accomplished piece of film-making that confirms Lee Chang-dong as one of the great masters of mood and enigmatic meaning. It would not be stretching things too far to call him `the Korean Chabrol'.

This isn't the first time the Faulkner aspect of the story has been filmed, as Tommy Lee Jones headlined Peter Werner's short teleplay, Barn Burning, in 1980. But Lee translates its musings on paternal legacy and its lament for the changing of the landscape and all that represents with an acuity that owes much to Shin Jum-hee's thoughtful production design and Hong Kyung-pyo's jitterishly observant widescreen photography. 

The score by Lee Sung-hyun (aka Mowg) reinforces the sense of unease and uncertainty, as the vulnerable but volatile Yoo Ah-in tries to find the missing (but also elusive) Jeon Jong-seo (who excels on debut as a footloose fantasist whose vanishing is by no means as sinister as Yoo perceives), while channelling his bitter resentment at Steven Yeun's intrusion into his cherished daydream. The decision to cast Yeun (who is known for The Walking Dead) makes him seem insouciantly superior to the relatively unknown Yoo, who shares his father's detachment from the unfathomable world around him. But, even though the ennui he exudes makes him eminently resistible, especially when he seems so indifferent to Jong-seo's fate, Yeun pays a heavy price for enjoying so glibly a lifestyle that Yoo not only resents, but also fails to understand. 

South Korean stuntman-turned-director Jung Byung-gil is clearly aware of these high-kicking, fist-flying, sword-wielding women. But he and co-writer Jung Byung-sik also lean heavily on Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita (1990) in making The Villainess, his second fictional feature after the serial killer thriller, Confession of Murder (2012). But the influence of Yasuharu Hasebe, Park Chan-wook and, yes, even Tarantino is evident in an often gleefully over-the-top romp that combines cartoonish and sickening violence with a punishing attitude towards women that is supposed to be back-handedly complimentary. 

Following a bravura opening sequence that uses a wall mirror to switch from a first- to a third-person perspective as a black-clad assassin slays all-comers in corridors, stairwells and a gymnasium, Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin) is cornered by the cops in a back alley downpour. She is placed in a sparsely furnished room with a large wooden crucifix on the wall and sedated with fumes pumped in through a ventilator. On the orders the Korean Intelligence Agency, Sook-hee undergoes plastic surgery and is afforded the opportunity to escape from handlers in breathing apparatus so that Kwon-sook can assess her prowess, as she takes a hostage and blunders through a ballet class, a kitchen and a drama rehearsal before being shot while attempting to jump to freedom off a rooftop. 

The KIA broadcast that a Chinese-Korean agent has committed suicide in detention and Sook-hee agrees to work for the bureau for a decade after she is informed by handler Kwon-sook (Kim Seo-hyung) that she is pregnant. However, she does poorly at the aptitude tests designed to determine her sleeper profession and only responds to acting before giving birth to a daughter, Eun-hye (Kim Yun-woo). But, while she proves a doting mother, Sook-hee remains a honed fighter and teaches cocky Kim-sun (Jo Eun-ji) a lesson when she tries to humiliate her in a kendo session. She also beats her in a speed trial to assemble and fire a pistol, an exercise that reminds Sook-hee of put coerced into taking a similar test as a young girl (Min Ye-ji) by Joong-san (Shin Ha-kyun), the gangster who had turned her into a killing machine following the murder of her father (Park Chul-min). 

Sook-hee had been hiding under the bed when her father had been butchered and his blood had splattered her face. But she also sees a young girl looking down at her after she has a spot of bother dispatching her first target as a KIA killer and has to sword fight with him before eventually running him through on the upstairs landing. Momentarily stunned by the gaze of her witness, Sook-hee had fled on a motorbike, only to find a fleet of besuited henchmen pursuing her. Several fail to survive bushido duels while speeding through a narrow road tunnel and Sook-hee is forced to ride over a police car and plunge into the river when confronted with a roadblock. 

Holding her breath underwater, Sook-hee sees her father's reassuring face and recalls the fishing trip with a family friend when she had been shown the white opal she would be given on her wedding day. However, this prompted the unseen friend to murder Sook-hee's father and he had found her cowering under the bed when he had returned to find the precious stone. Thus, Sook-hee sobs when she surfaces and scrambles to the bank, where she finds Kwon-sook waiting for her. She takes Sook-hee to her new apartment in an undisclosed part of South Korea, where she literally bumps into Hyun-soo (Sung Joon) in the lift. 

Sook-hee has no idea that he is her KIA minder and has been following her progress on CCTV from the moment she arrived at the base. Indeed, he gave baby Eun-hye the cuddly rabbit she still takes everywhere and he tries so hard to make a good impression on Sook-hee that she calls Kwon-sook to run a background check on his story about being widowed in a robbery. She finds him irksome when he intercepts a pizza delivery and suggests she should give her daughter healthy food. But she is also touched by the fact that his wife came from Yanbian, the autonomous prefecture in north-eastern China where she was raised. 

A succession of chance encounters softens Sook-hee's attitude to Hyun-soo, especially as Eun-hye seems to like him. But, when he greets her off the bus with an umbrella, she invites him to watch her perform in a play and they go to dinner afterwards. As he knows her so well from his KIA observations, he wears a tie the same cobalt colour as the one Joong-san had worn on the day he married Sook-hee and took her to Seoul for their honeymoon. However, despite his promise that they would live a normal life, he had been murdered by the same man who had killed her father. 

Driving home after supper, Hyun-soo lets slip that he wishes Sook-hee wasn't married and offers to walk home in the rain rather than embarrass her in front of the babysitter. But Sook-hee stops the car and comes back for Hyun-soo with an umbrella and they kiss on returning home after she admits her husband is dead. They are undoing shirt buttons when Sook-hee gets a phone call and she lies about a colleague being rushed to hospital in order to meet up with Min-joo (Son Min-ji), her only friend on the training course who has just been given her first mission. They are to pose as escorts to steal the secrets hidden on their client's phone. However, Sook-hee's theft of the man's phone is easily detected and Min-joo is stabbed through the neck during the ensuing struggle. Having killed her foes, Sook-hee rushes Min-joo to the waiting van. But Kim-sun refuses to get medical attention for Min-joo and blames her death on Sook-hee's bungling and she returns home to sob in the shower with Hyun-soo trying to console her. 

During a debriefing on Min-joo's death, chief Joong-san reveals that Sook-hee has ties with Joong-san's treacherous lieutenant, Choon-mo (Lee Seung-koo),
and may even be a double agent. However, they are keen to catch Choon-mo's boss and Kwon-sook suggests that Sook-hee might be the perfect woman for the job. But, first, she has to approve Sook-hee's request to marry Hyun-soo, who has hinted that he isn't the man she thinks he is, only to be informed that she is a very different woman to the one he knows. Sook-hee pretends to seek permission from her parents and Kwon-sook is sitting next to Hyun-soo when she phones with good news about their wedding. 

On the day of the ceremony, however, Kim-sun arrives out of the blue and taunts Sook-hee for getting Min-joo killed. She also hands her a phone, as Kwon-sook orders Sook-hee to go to the toilets and assemble a high-powered rifle from packages hidden around the room. Yet, when she aims through the fan blades of a building opposite, Sook-hee is taken aback by the target in the sunglasses and misses her aim with several shots. She is called back inside and marries Hyun-soo, with Eun-hye as the flower girl. He urges her to be happy, but she knows she recognised Joong-san and can't remember why. But (despite the plastic surgery) he finds her face familiar, too, when Choon-mo shows him a photograph of his would-be assassin.

Sook-hee spots Joong-san in the audience during the next performance of her play and he looks on as the heroine shoots herself in the head in the last act. He slips into the seat opposite her when Hyun-soo is called away during dinner and asks if she recognises him. She stays in character, as he pulls out a gun beneath the table, and warns him that she would be prepared to eliminate a past love in order to protect what she now has. Remaining icily cool, Joong-san apologises for mistaking her for someone he once loved and a tear wells in Sook-hee's eye, as he rises and leaves. 

As she starts out of her reverie, we flashback to Sook-hee's wedding night with Joong-san. He had been forced to self-stitch a wound on his cheek and this had reminded him of the dead face of his new bride's father. She twirls in her wedding dress and promises to forget about seeking vengeance if Joong-san promises to live a normal life, as she knows he was not responsible for killing her father. 

Back in the present, Kwon-sook shows Sook-hee a photograph of her speaking to Joong-san in the restaurant and asks why she failed to finish him on her wedding day. She claims he is merely a fan and is piqued when Kwon-sook reminds her that she jeopardises her future by not following orders. Joong-san sends Sook-hee flowers and she feels a pang when Kim-sun taunts her with the fact that she has been ordered to wipe her ex-husband out. Despising Kim-sun, Sook-hee messages Joong-san and he ambushes the assassin when she arrives in his building and beats her up. 

Furious that her plan has been thwarted again, Kwon-sook sends Hyun-soo to Yanbian to execute Joong-san and warns him that Sook-hee's safety depends on his success. Fully aware of the relationship between his wife and his target, Hyun-soo declares that he needs to nurse his ailing mother and hugs Sook-hee, who may just be starting to suspect that her husband is not who he says he is. However, she gets no time to ponder her predicament, as she is taken at gunpoint by Kwon-sook, who reveals that Hyun-soo is a KIA agent. As he goes to collect Eun-hye, Joong-san rams the car carrying Sook-hee and shoots Kwon-sook and her henchmen. He gives Sook-hee a gun and tells her to rescue her daughter, but she arrives home in time to see them thrown from the apartment by a bomb blast that kills them both and Sook-hee is distraught. 

She returns to KIA headquarters and finds Kwon-sook, who has been wounded in the right arm. Sook-hee pulls a gun on her, but Kwon-sook plays her surveillance footage from inside the flat and shows Choon-mo (carrying the sledgehammer that Sook-hee had seen from under the bed on the night her father died) attack Hyun-soo with the help of Jang-chun (Jung Hae-kyun) and Kim-sun (who has clearly betrayed Sook-hee in the hope of surviving) . Recognising him as Joong-san's sidekick, he tries to shout down the phone that Eun-hye is his child. But Choon-mo drops a blade into the floor to distract him and they fight before Hyun-soo is eventually overpowered. Choon-mo executes Kim-sun and detonates the bomb so that Sook-hee sees her husband and daughter die. 

Distraught, Sook-hee asks Kwon-sook why she is tormenting her and falls to her knees. But she isn't down for long, as she drives a car across the mid-air divide between two buildings to crash through a window into Joong-san's lair. Choon-mo looks on, as his men are picked off during a titanic gun battle. She ventures upstairs and finds Joong-san alone and asks if he ever loved her. He insists he did, but claims the right to destroy her because he had made her. Sook-hee drops her gun and produces two blades and seeks to show him the kind of killer she had become. They crash through a window and keep struggling as they hang from a ledge before dropping into the street below. Sook-hee is hit by a car. 

Undaunted, however, she smashes its windscreen and hurtles after the bus on which Joong-san has escaped. Clambering on to the bonnet, she somehow keeps the vehicle speeding in a straight line while she leaps on to the bus and breaks through the window in order to obliterate several more of Joong-san's oppos. With Choon-mo at the wheel of the careering bus, Sook-hee and Joong-san fight between the seats until she stabs Choon-mo so that the bus crashes and turns on its side. Staggering to her feet, she picks her way through the wreckage to the injured Joong-san. She raises an axe to kill him and he taunts her when he hesitates. As the camera gyrates around the couple, Sook-hee hears the whistled melody that had preceded her father's death and, finally knowing the truth, she buries the blade in Joong-san's skull. Sirens approach and the heavens open, as Sook-hee emerges from the bus with blood and a sardonic smile on her face. Looking directly into the lens, she lets out a manic laugh that continues to echo as the credits roll. 

Given that this slick, but whoppingly contrived actioner takes homage to the point of blatant emulation, there seems little need for a Hollywood remake: but that's never stopped anyone before. Structurally similar to another tale of a gun-toting avenging angel, Sarmad Masud's My Pure Land, the flashbacking narrative mosaics its fragments together without a hint of character depth. But, while editor Seo Hun-mi deserves credit for retaining a semblance of plot logic, he must also be blamed with Jung and cinematographer Park Jung-hun for reducing choreographer Kwon Gui-duck's fight and chase sequences to shakicam obfuscations, whose self-consciously intricate dynamism deprives them of any visceral potency. 

Just as the excess of crashing, banging and walloping generates precious little excitement, the performances lack the charisma to persuade the audience to care what happens to Sook-hee, Hyun-soo or even the pudgily adorable Eun-hye. One suspects this is Jung's judgement call, as Kim Ok-bin and Sung Joon have proved perfectly serviceable before. But, for all Kim's pugnacious exertions, she is upstaged here by the pitiless Shin Ha-kyun and the icily impassive Kim Seo-hyung, who respond to Sook-hee's demand to know why they have put her through so much suffering with equal indifference. Such misogyny might have been more impactful if Jung had allowed a little bleak comedy to seep into proceedings. But there's nothing ironic or drolly postmodern about the violence on show here. It's flashy and lurid and winds up being sadistically nasty. This might have mattered less if the story had been as compelling as it is convoluted. But, in the case of this overblown video game, it feels smugly gratuitous.