‘Burning’ Star Jeon Jong-seo Is White Hot Again in Netflix-Korean Revenge Movie ‘Ballerina’
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Unrecognizable from her co-starring and breakout role in 2018 hit “Burning,” Jeon Jong-seo is the centerpiece, the tortured protagonist and the athletic avenger, but not the titular dancer, in Netflix movie and Busan International Film Festival selection “Ballerina.” In the hands of fast-rising director Lee Chung-hyung, Jeon is a coolly calculating female former bodyguard who, until roused, looks like she is half dazed. The suicide of her best friend, a sweet wannabe ballerina, who had been blackmailed into sex slavery by a nasty gang, however, is enough to set Jeon’s character, Ok-ju, on the path towards “John Wick”-like ultra-violence. While Lee never leaves the audience in much doubt as to where the film is heading – an early scene in a convenience store is cool, shocking and righteous – his “Ballerina” is typically Korean in that it spends most of the first two reels establishing Ok-ju’s moral standing and motivation for the bloodshed that is going to dominate the latter portions. Once justified, Lee pours it all on, with a dose of weapons fetishization, a horde of mostly disposable villains and heaps of neon-lit bloodshed.