Pieta

Kang-do collects debts for loan sharks. His method is simple and appalling: he cripples the debtor and collects the insurance. Then a middle-aged woman arrives claiming to be the mother who abandoned him. Kim Ki-duk won the Golden Lion at Venice with it, making Pietà the first Korean film to take the top prize at one of the three major festivals. It was both admired and attacked. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 73 percent and Metacritic at 72. The shared objection is that it lacks subtlety and depth of character; the defence is that committed performances carry it. How it depicts violence and sexuality became its own argument, and some scenes are genuinely unbearable. At home it won the Blue Dragon Award for Best Film. Worldwide it grossed around 3.6 million dollars. Who it is for: viewers drawn to the harsher end of Korean cinema and to stories of moral reckoning. Who it is not for: anyone who will object to how the female character is used. That is precisely where the film draws its heaviest criticism.