No Mercy is a 2019 South Korean action drama film about a woman recently released from prison who takes revenge when her younger sister disappears the next day.
From Fantasia Festival 2019: Revenge films have certainly earned their place in South Korean cinema, especially after the success of the Vengeance Trilogy, with Oldboy (2003) becoming an international hit. No Mercy (언니 Original South Korean title) however, is an entirely different beast of a movie with a female central character named In Ae (Si-young Lee), a former security officer with martial arts training draped in a red dress and matching heels. It’s a good look and while Lee is better known for her more romantic comedy roles, she shows off some impressive fighting skills here, which is more so when you consider she does more than ninety percent of it without a stunt double. This is important because the action choreography feels more genuine and with less camera cuts, really drawing us into the fight. She’s also quite adept with weapons and the as the story sees In Ae discovering more about her sister’s disappearance, her anger escalates, as does her wrath, stepping up the intensity the further she goes, making all who stand in her way suffer.
No Mercy works to make us feel In Ae’s pain with every new reveal. Her younger sister Eunhye (Se-wan Park in her debut role), is an intellectually disabled teen, and Park’s performance deserves praise. What starts with school bullies taking advantage of her ends up leading back to what caused In Ae to end up in prison in the first place. Things get a little emotionally manipulative, hitting the same painful spot over and over again, but it’s hard as the audience to not feel the same anger and frustration from the abuse. We want In Ae to push forward.
This makes No Mercy not an easy film to watch. It takes its subject matter to dark places but also manages to balance action and drama with some thought-provoking moments. Interestingly, it begins in the middle of the story, setting the fast pace and unlike many other South Korean films in the genre, it has a shorter runtime, allowing these well-developed contrasting characters – the meek Eunhye and the fierce Inae – facing a world of mostly horrible men, the most powerful of whom is the most despicable.
Even as a standard revenge thriller, No Mercy comes packed with a universal message, how society can be unfair and malicious. More so, female oppression, abuse of the vulnerable, and the mistreatment of the intellectually disabled are constantly at play where many scenes have characters justify their power through what comes across as ignorance. It is because No Mercy does such a convincing job of this, that In Ae’s revenge story makes sense, she taking it into her own hands because no one else bothered to care. As extreme as it is, it also feels more and more satisfying with each bad guy she takes down, her ruthless and unforgiving ways feeling earned.