Review of Ballerina / 발레리나, directed by Lee Chung-hyun

One of the actors whose career I have been so interested in tracing throughout the years is Jeon Jeong-seo.

I remember when she was making her debut as an actor in Burning, and when I went to the North American premiere of the movie (and had an awkward moment with Steven Yeun when I was exiting the movie theater), one of the core performances from the movie that burned itself in my mind was Jeon’s.

How she danced in the sunset was so gorgeous, and apparently it was unplanned.

So, naturally, I’ve been keeping an eye on the work she has done throughout the years and managed to watch almost everything she has been in.

When I first saw the trailer for Ballerina, I was immediately intrigued by the fact that it evoked the Korean movies I would watch in the late nineties and early 2000s, the Park Chanwook movies of my own cinematic coming of age.

I ended up watching Ballerina the day it came out, although you’ll be reading this in the future due to my blog’s editorial calendar.

Anyways, here is my review!

After the death of a beloved friend, Jang Ok-ju decides to get revenge in her name.

As you can gather from the header above, our main character is Jang Ok-ju. A former bodyguard, she goes to the convenience store at the beginning of the movie, preparing to get some drinks and food to eat with her best friend.

But when she arrives at the apartment, no one replies when she calls out her friend’s name. She enters the apartment and at first it seems like no one is in there, but Ok-ju is horrified to enter the bathroom and find her friend Min-hee in a pool of her own blood, sitting in the bathtub.

Before this, though, we get some eerie cuts to a ballerina in the middle of a performance. She’s sweating and looking out into the audience instead of focusing on her own dancing, but when she goes for a dance move, her ankle moves to the side. It snaps.

This is an image we’re going to return to later in the movie, at it has some explanations. The man in the audience she’s looking at is Choi, the man who becomes the antagonist throughout the film.

In a note she left behind for Ok-ju, Min-hee tells her that her final wish is for Ok-ju to go after a sex trafficker named Choi Pro.

He ended up blackmailing her by filming her in a motel, drugged while he does sexual acts to her. Ok-ju tracks him down through social media profiles and ends up getting his attention in a club.

The two head back to the same motel Min-hee was filmed at, and while Choi Pro tries to drug her, she pretends to be asleep.

He puts on his BDSM gear and begins filming him going down on her, but Ok-ju springs up and attacks him. As she gets the better hand and slashes at his face, the workers at the motel come in and try to stop her.

Turns out they’re members of Choi’s gang. Ok-ju escapes into the hallway, where a high schooler, another victim, bangs open a door, forcing the guy chasing Ok-ju to saw off his own leg by accident. Together, the two girls escape, trying to forge a plan on what to do next.

Ok-ju secures weapons from an old friend, while Choi is accosted by his gang leader. He tells Choi to go off and find the girl who humiliated him, and Choi hunts her down. When he attacks her, she escapes, but he lies to his boss and says that he got her.

But this is obviously proven wrong when Ok-ju shows up at the gang base, epically taking down any man who comes in her path. She shoots the leader straight in the face, then takes down several men.

Along the way, she discovers her high school friend, who had been kidnapped by the gang.

She gets Choi’s location in the process, and while he almost takes her down when he randomly appears at the scene, she kills his comrade and with her friend, who proves to be alive despite looking dead at first, the two take him to the ocean.

She dumps him right next to the water, puts oil all around him, and lets him burn to death right next to the water that would save him.

Afterwards, she heads to his home and takes the videos of his victims before she drives off.

Overall Thoughts

I saw this movie as a more serious version of Kill Boksoon, but also with undertones that remind me of the Korean movies that would come out during the 2000s.

The plot in this one is pretty straightforward, as there aren’t many frills when it comes to the finer details in this film. Regardless, Jeon is the best part of the film, playing this character who almost feels like a black hole at times.

We don’t get to learn a ton about her and what she does outside of her friendship with Min-hee, but her anger drives the force of the movie forward when nothing else will.

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