Review of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) by Simo R — 28 Sep 2008

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is the first film from Park Chan Wook's much admired revenge trilogy, and like Oldboy it's startling and incredible. Lady Vengeance remains unseen by me. We meet Ryu, a deaf factory worker with a sick sister. They hope for a donor for a kidney transplant but desperation forces him to respond to a flyer he sees for illegal organs. He uses the money they have for an operation to pay for the removal of one of his kidneys in return for one of for his sisters. He gets a fleeced to put it mildly, and then he and his activist girlfriend hatch a plan to kidnap the factory owners daughter for ransom. As you can imagine, it all goes terribly wrong and escalates into the stuff of nightmares. No one is walking away happy in this film. In fact, most of them won't be walking away at all. Park Chan Wook is incredible for conveying complex ideas and plot points entirely visually. You won't find much narrative exposition here, and it's so much the better for it. It's kind of a shame that these movies are on the TartanExtreme label because it makes them seem immediately exploitative, and as a film it certainly is not, CategoryIII this aint. Yes, there is some shocking violence, but it serves to further the drama rather than existing as the big payoff to string the rest of the film around. Like Oldboy, Sympathy for... contains moments of incredible beauty and insight. Everyone gets their revenge in this movie. Do we understand why? Yes. Are we sympathetic? Yes, to a point. Whichever, fans of cinema should check this out.

(4 1/2 - fucking java stars don't work).