Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) is the first of Park Chan-wook's revenge trilogy. A deaf and mute factory worker turns to the organ black market to get his sister a kidney, is swindled, and agrees to a kidnapping to raise the money. The plan fails, and from there the film becomes a chain of revenge in which everyone has a case. It is the harshest and least loved of the three. Instead of the energy of Oldboy or the ornate structure of Lady Vengeance there is silence, long takes and almost no score. The violence is not display, it is consequence. The moral position is the point of the trilogy. Nobody here is simply evil; everyone wants payment for their own loss, which is exactly why the chain never stops. Park deliberately refuses to give the audience a character to hold on to. Song Kang-ho and Shin Ha-kyun lead. It failed at the Korean box office and split critics. Its standing was built up over years, by people working backwards through the door Oldboy opened. It runs 129 minutes. Good for: Korean cinema, revenge told with the moral weight distributed evenly, and cold quiet construction. Less good for: the violence and torture are extremely heavy, including the killing of an animal. The pace is deliberately flat and the film never lets you settle behind any character. Starting the trilogy here loses most viewers.