Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

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.

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!

Telling the story of a deaf mute searching for a kidney for his dying sister, 'Sympathy for Mr Vengeance' is an entirely new experience in the revenge department. Rather than just tell the story of one mans quest for revenge, it keeps a balance by telling the stories of all the wronged parties. This is something I have never seen before but it works really well as you soon start sympathising with all the characters involved.

It's a film that doesn't want to glamorise revenge or violence and believe me, it doesn't. It shows the dark, brutal and gritty side to it all and in the end you feel sorry for everyone involved.

Because the main character is a deaf mute there isn't much dialogue in the film and there is also very little music, which suits the film well. However, what really astounded me was the way in which Park Chan-wook and his actors manage to convey so much without saying a word. The acting really is brilliant, and the directing is absolute genius.

'Sympathy for Mr Vengeance' is a phenomenal film, from beginning to end. I cant recommend it enough, it's a must see film worthy of much praise and attention. Take it from me; you don't want to miss this!

10 out of 10

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.

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.