Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

The heir apparent to Sam Peckinpah is tucked away far from Hollywood. Chan-wook Park, I'm sure few people know of him outside of Korea but talent like this can not go unoticed for long. I knew nothing of this film or Mr. Park before seeing it at the Seattle International Film Festival. Human (political?) isolation permeates the film, connectiveness to others whether familial or conjugal comes with a steep price to pay. Vengence to reclaim honor is a staple in Asian cinema, Mr. Park's "Revenge" completely sidesteps the tired honor formula making us question what happens when normal folk take revenge into the realm of pyschotic? This is the type of film that you and your friends will passionately discuss over STRONG drinks afterwords, there is no nuetrality in opinions, like Solondz's "Hapiness" you love it or hate it. As the film ended, a packed house gave a tepid applause, not because of a lack of enthusiasm, a collective numbness left a pall over the audience, a raping of all the senses. Like Cronenberg's "Crash" and Tarkovsky's "Stalker", one becomes defeated by a hypnotic sense of forboding, you are forced to endure it, pummeled into submission. The violence is very graphic, but as much as Mr. Park show's, it's what he doesn't show that makes him so talented, the subtle use of sound to advance the film is outright brilliance. Like Takeshi Kitano's early films, the extreme violence is never gratuitous yet the like offbeat humor, very unsettling. "Sympathy For Mr. Vengence" is not 'dark' it is uncompromisingly bleak, ah but bleakness never looked so good!

Before you watch this film, just be aware that you're not going to walk away from it with a big smile on your face. More like you'll want to slit your wrists. To say that Mr. Vengeance is a powerful, gut-wrenching nightmare is like saying that DaVinci merely dabbled in art.

The plot is so simple yet so complex. The direction is so elegant yet so hard-hitting. The simplistic nature of the story makes the descent into hell so shocking and captivating. You don't realize there is no going back until it's far, FAR too late.

Ryu is a deaf/mute who works in the loudest factory in the world, doing a really depressing job. His sister needs a kidney transplant, but they don't have the money to pay for it. He cannot give her one of his own because their blood types do not match. Ryu decides to go to black market organ traders to trade one of his own for one that matches his sister. Waking up naked and kidney-less in an abandoned building he now needs to raise money for his own kidney.

Ryu is now fired from his job by President Park, who is downsizing the company. His anarchist girlfriend Yeong-mi convinces him to kidnap Park's daughter and hold her to ransom. From then on, things get very, very, VERY heavy and the idea of who exactly Mr. Vengeance is is blurred and sympathy is felt for almost everyone. Revenge comes at a high price and seemingly never ends. Not that I am saying forgiving and forgetting is the way. But this movie will make you think twice about getting your own back.

The violence is spontaneous and extremely graphic without ever feeling exploitational. Sometimes it has a darkly comic feel to it, the rest of the time it's goddamn hardcore. You'll wince a great deal during this movie, that's for damn sure.

Park Chan-wook directs with such beautifully composed images that are far from the the garish MTV-style action/thriller movies produced in Hollywood these days. I don't want to sound like some sort of snob who proclaims all foreign films to be great and all Hollywood to be crap but it's not very often that Hollywood makes a film like this unless it's a remake. Written in a mere 20 hours in a single massive, creative outburst, this movie seems to have genius laced through every minute of it's running time.

Not a date movie, not a whogivesadamn pig-out movie. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a film you will be sucked right into and you'll be far from happy when you emerge at the end. But what a horrific ride!

Chan Wook-Park is for my money, the greatest film maker alive today. His recent work (the second part in his "Revenge Trilogy" just won the Grand Prix at Cannes) has seen him grow even stronger! But with this, we saw the director of S. Korea's biggest ever film for it's time (Joint Security Area) grow up, and do something he HONESTLY wanted to do. Sympathy for Mr. Vengance is not a nice film, it's brutal, cold and very bleak, but who said movies cannot be like this? let alone be... dare I say... "Enjoyable"?

The acting, the camera work, the cinematography... hell, the whole production set a new standard for new-wave Korean art-house cinema, it showed how art can remain with it's roots but still show it's mainstream tendencies. Hence, Chan Wook-Park being able to bring truly personal movies, that he has control over 100% to out big screens, with out any producer BS, proving that film makers CAN make what they want, if they have the courage and heart!

This movie will never be liked by many, as many may find it deceiving, how such a pretty looking movie can turn out to be so brutal and attack there moral sense, but hey, if they don't want to be challenged they can stay home and watch the far more violent "Bad Boys 2"...

Roll one Sympathy for Mrs. Vengance... the final part in the "Revenge Trilogy"

What an erratic and interesting ride it has been for violence infested movies throughout the long decades of cinematic experiments so far. Whether it was combinations of drama, horror, even comedy or the fusion of all three simultaneously, their results rarely attained much impact aside from delivering pure shock value and strong cult followings. Nevertheless, such unfortunate stereotypes didn't prevent me from seeking out films that most people proclaimed to be "hard to stomach". Better luck next time; Funny Games, Fingered and countless cannibal themed films from Italy, respectively of course.

I often come upon films that try very hard to make me look away from the screen and try even harder to make me empathize with the characters who are delivering and or receiving the poorly climaxed torment. Such cinematic pretentiousness finds no place in my mind and gets discarded as soon as processed.

And then came Mr. Vengeance. Possibly to aid the ever growing genre of dramatically pragmatic films, bravely dealing with real life stories in a bold and sometimes unseen fashion.

What made Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance all that much visceral was the fact that there was no pleasant music to tranquilize the painful story and beautify the scenery, nor was there any stylish before-and-after fight facial expressions and catchy lines to make the whole experience seem out of this world and cool. Not that there is anything wrong with using those elements in film. And it needs to be noted how interesting Kang-ho Song is always to watch, whether he's playing an aspiring wrestler, a small town inspector or a father on an avenging rampage. Credible acting is essential in films that have to deal with heavy biases for being mentally hard to digest and visually difficult to appreciate, gladly SFMV had those holes covered with an ease.

The entire flow of the story seemed very effortless and drag free. Both the action and reaction of each character seemed to be traveling at such fast speed that rarely gave you time to over-analyze their motives and directions, which ultimately helped the story to signify the depth and restlessness of each person on a mission to get their revenge.

Audiences are always mercilessly expressing their distraught over revenge flicks for one reason or another, so if you still have any room and temptation left to see a serious and sophisticated side of revenge then I can't recommend a better film, by a better director, to take you on the hybrid journey of pain, retribution and more pain.

I know absolutely NOTHING about Chan-wook Park, but after watching 'Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance' I would put him straight at the top of my most promising new directors list. This is a stunning piece of work which wipes the floor with contemporary Hollywood's so-called "thrillers". It's a very grim and depressing movie, full of violence, but also includes some great performances, some beautiful sequences, and characters you genuinely empathize with. Sadly very few people are going to see this brilliant movie, and the few who get to hear about it will be told about the more extreme and brutal scenes and will probably think it's just about shock for shocks sake. It's anything but. In many ways it harks back to the days when a dark and serious movie like 'Taxi Driver' could find a mass adult audience, rather than the moronic Bad Boys/Charlie's Angels movie culture we're now faced with. Ha-kyun Shin plays Ryu, an unemployed deaf mute who is desperate to help his sick sister (Ji-Eun Lim) who needs a kidney transplant. When his experiences on the organ black market fail (the movie deals with this and I don't want to spoil it) his politically extreme girlfriend Yu-sun (Bo-bae Han) hatches a kidnap plan. This sets off a tragic chain of events that you just have to see to believe! I was immediately fascinated with the movie and my interest never let up for a minute. The actors are all first rate, and Park's direction is difficult to fault. The movie continually surprises all the way up to its very compelling climax. 'Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance' is one of the most impressive movies I've seen this decade. Make sure you get to see it!