Directed by: Lim Jin-soon (임진순)
Starring: Don Lee (마동석), Kim Sae-ron (김새론), Lee Sang-yeob (이상엽), Jin Seon-kyu (진선규), Jang Gwang (장광), Oh Hee-joon (오희준), Shin Sehwi (신세휘)
Review: Gi-cheol (Don Lee) is a former boxing champion who looks to reinvent himself as a gym teacher at an all girls’ high school in a small rural town where a student has recently gone missing. The girl’s disappearance is largely a mystery, but Gi-cheol gets a very strange feeling about the town soon after his arrival as all the villagers seem uptight and highly agitated.
After he gets acquainted with one student, Yoo-jin (Kim Se-ron), who he catches skipping out on class one afternoon to go look for her missing friend, he quickly realizes that Yoo-jin is actually the only person in the entire town who seems to care about finding the missing school girl, and it suddenly feels to him like the whole town may be in on some giant secret. Soon, Gi-cheol finds himself in a sort of vigilante investigator role as he begins to unravel the truth, one punch-to-the-face at a time.
The Villagers (a.k.a. Ordinary People) is anchored by the entertaining and often physical performance of the burly and charismatic Don Lee, who is beginning to create something of a genre of his own here in Korea. In a similar way that Jean Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Steven Seagal did, the “Don Lee” physicality and persona is beginning to define the kinds of ideal or even custom made roles he is landing.
As sort of a giant teddy bear equipped with explosive punching power, Don Lee exudes a likable charm but always the sleeping dragon that dare not be awakened and made angry. So there is a certain amount of “Don Lee” that audiences have grown accustomed to seeing and expect to see higher levels of physicality out of his performances that usually come in a knock-down drag-em-out kind of style.
The Villagers is absolutely one of these films. As a former boxing champion, Gi-cheol is a strong puncher capable of blowing holes through walls and doors with his fists, a skill that comes in handy during his bout of vigilantism in the film. He delivers some satisfying knockout punches to various baddies that will fit perfectly into his ever growing highlight reel of knockouts and makes the several brawl scenes throughout The Villagers quite satisfying and generally pleasing to the eye. However, one or two more instances where Don Lee could get rough and tough would have been welcomed.
The overall tone of The Villagers is quite the mixture of genres that would best be described as Thriller first, Drama second, Action third, and Comedy fourth. An interesting combination to be sure but it actually works surprisingly well and makes for an enjoyable time out at the movies. The film’s thriller aspects come through the town being highly suspect as to having something to do with the girl’s disappearance, and features some freaky moments of a potential kidnapper in pursuit of defenseless teen girls during late hours of the night.
There’s Drama in The Villagers that comes from Yoo-jin looking after her friend’s sick grandmother as well as from the teacher-student relationship that develops from Gi-cheol taking on the role of Yoo-jin’s ally and protector when necessary. Action obviously comes with the brawl scenes as Gi-cheol tears his way through the film’s scummy villains and neutered police department, and the Comedy finally coming from the general aura that Don Lee brings to his role, sometimes even coming across like a giant teddy bear that doesn’t know his own power at times.
The Villagers can be viewed as generic in a lot of ways, but if you watch the film as more of a fun entry into an ever growing body of Don Lee films where his physicality becomes a key feature of the overall spectacle, there is a lot of fun to be had in The Villagers despite its very dark tone overall. Don lee has such a great screen presence and is always super fun to watch. Kim Se-ron (who the world got to know through her performance in The Man From Nowhere as a child actress) is excellent as Yoo-jin who spends a lot of the film emotionally closed off and defensive as she takes it upon herself to track down the whereabouts of her missing friend, which is very understandable considering how the town is behaving, but in the later stages of the film she’s given some great moments to show a larger range of her acting talents.
The Villagers is very aware of the kind of genre entertainment that it is, and that is something that can’t be said for many mainstream films today that often go out of their way to try and please everybody and upset nobody, ending up either very watered down or with bad case of identity crisis. The Villagers knows what it wants to do and does it well, so it has my respect in these regards. Overall The Villagers is a small and enjoyable piece of genre filmmaking and another strong entry into the ever growing library of Don Lee movies. If we still had video stores, I would predict him having a shelf of his own in just a few years time.
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