Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Vengeance is one of humanity's more lamentable instincts, and one we'll have to overcome as a species one day. When one acts out of vengeance one seeks only to hurt, and when people start hurting each other because they're hurt themselves, everybody ends up hurting and nobody really gains anything.

I think that's the main message Park Chan-Wook wants us to take away from SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, though the movie is complex and oblique and doubtless open to many interpretations. It is a challenging movie in many ways - the story is never spelled out clearly, leaving the viewer to deduce many key events and motivations. Dialogue is sparse, and this is not solely attributable to the fact that the main character is deaf and dumb. The movie also challenges - almost terrorises - with its bleakness and occasional scenes of quite disturbing violence and gore.

SFMV is an ambitious project, and one that doesn't fit into any established cinematic mould. The story, characters, themes and aesthetics are all very unusual and creative. I can't think of any other film that's quite like it, though at times I likened the experience to that of watching certain Takashi Miike movies. Actually, Kim Ki-Duk's movies are probably the closest point of reference, though Park Chan-Wook's film is smarter.

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE is not a movie I'd choose for a movie night with friends, or one that I'd lend or recommend to most of the people I know. Perhaps I'm unfair in my assessment of my friends, but I can't think of many that would enjoy it. Actually I'm surprised that the film is held in such wide regard, as its not a conventional film or an easy film, and is far more art than entertainment. In my experience that narrows a film's audience significantly, but I've yet to hear anybody express a negative reaction to the film. I guess originality and technical virtuosity are still appreciated after all - perhaps more so by those that have gravitated to Korean cinema in recent years than in other groups, since they are most often to be found there.

With JSA and SFMV, Park Chan-Wook has definitely shown himself to be one of the brightest figures in the new wave of Korean directors. Both are very well crafted in pretty much every respect. The cast of SFMV also deserve commendation for their performances, which are all good. Song Kang-Ho steals the show with a wonderfully understated performance, though.

Recommended, but make sure you know what you're getting.

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"

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!

For all the right reasons, to help save a sister's life, off to a black market butcher and their double crossing knife. Through more formal operations, a matched kidney then appears, but the price is far too high for accessing the surgeons shears. A small ransom for a child, keep them hostage for a day, until the father drops a case of cash, then takes their kid away. Now the spiral has commenced, events cascade out of control, with the hope that dangled briefly, now scythed clean, no longer whole - and it doesn't make life easier if you're deaf as well as being metaphorically dumb and blind, no matter how desperate you might be.