Review of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) by Kenneth L — 23 May 2010

This movie is billed as a thriller, which is not really accurate. Thrillers typically have good guys you can root for, and bad guys who, when they die, you can feel good about it. This movie doesn't really have any good guys or bad guys, just people who want to kill each other for fairly good reasons.

I guess that makes it more realistic than a typical thriller, but it also means that the movie is rather hard to enjoy. It's more just a tragedy where things go really badly. There was something strange about the audio in this movie: everything seemed muted, as if heard through a wall.

At first I attributed this to the main character's being deaf, but then I noticed that it persisted in scenes that did not feature him. Thus, either it was deliberately done throughout the whole movie, the sound was badly recorded to begin with, or there was something wrong with the way they put the movie on Netflix Instant.

In any event it was kind of distracting. The picture quality was also a bit off; the shots were nice, but it kind of looked like it was shot on an early 2000's home video recorder. Again, this may have just been a problem with the Netflix transfer.

The movie's acting alternates between being muted and intense. There are moments when the narrative is unclear, and I was left wondering what was going on for a while. Still, I could tell that the movie was made by a very competent director who knows exactly what he wants to do.

I thought Oldboy, which was made a year later by the same director (Park Chan-wook) was much better. This movie is pretty violent and depressing. I would not especially recommend going out of your way to see it if you are unsure whether or not you would like it.