The Hunt (2020)

The Most Dangerous Game, the classic 1924 short story and its 1932 film adaptation about humans being hunted for sport, is not really embellished or improved upon or developed here, just retold with 1. more gore, 2. wet Tarantinoism, 3. modern weapons that mean the twelve victims who wake up in an elaborately constructed fake Arkansas are dispatched remotely and en masse - there's no hunt required; and, 4. weak political satire - the nebulous joke here, about increasingly partisan American politics, seems to be that the hunters are woke lefties coolly slicing and dicing Trump supporters while demonstrating an uber political correctness in conversations with each other. 

★☆☆☆☆

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The Villainess (악녀) (Ak Nyeo) (2017)

The opening scene of Byung gil Jung's action movie, about a female assassin hellbent on revenge, is an extended first-person ultra-violent sword massacre of hundreds of suited thugs - a startling and original sequence that has you sitting up, awake, and paying attention (through your fingers) - but no sooner does this sequence end than the movie slips into very familiar territory, not just reminiscent of Kill Bill Vol.1 and La Femme Nikita but using near-exact replica scenes - from the child-under-the-bed moment to the honeymoon-suite bathroom assassination, so that what started so startlingly and originally ends up so generic and well-trodden it almost feels like a fanboy tribute.

★★☆☆☆

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