Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)
Country: KOR
Technical: col/scope 121m
Director: Park Chan-wook
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Shin Ha-gyun, Bae Du-na
Synopsis:
A redundant employee who is also deaf uses his severance pay to obtain a kidney for his chronically ill sister, but is double-crossed and resorts instead to a kidnapping scheme which goes horribly wrong for all concerned.
Review:
Leaving aside for a moment the far from original premise, the film suffers considerably from obscurities and inconsistencies in the screenplay: why is the handover not made when the father comes up with the money? who is the woman being raped by the organ racketeers? why are sister and girlfriend so confusingly alike? The aim seems to be an ironic sympathy, given that none of the participants has a complete picture of what is going on, the hero's deafness being the most literal illustration of this; unfortunately that sympathy extends into self-pity. In short, this is a detached view of some of the social forces at work in contemporary Korea (yes, politics do come into it quite a bit), with plenty of casual cruelty but none of the cinematic brio of Old Boy to redeem it.
Country: KOR
Technical: col/scope 121m
Director: Park Chan-wook
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Shin Ha-gyun, Bae Du-na
Synopsis:
A redundant employee who is also deaf uses his severance pay to obtain a kidney for his chronically ill sister, but is double-crossed and resorts instead to a kidnapping scheme which goes horribly wrong for all concerned.
Review:
Leaving aside for a moment the far from original premise, the film suffers considerably from obscurities and inconsistencies in the screenplay: why is the handover not made when the father comes up with the money? who is the woman being raped by the organ racketeers? why are sister and girlfriend so confusingly alike? The aim seems to be an ironic sympathy, given that none of the participants has a complete picture of what is going on, the hero's deafness being the most literal illustration of this; unfortunately that sympathy extends into self-pity. In short, this is a detached view of some of the social forces at work in contemporary Korea (yes, politics do come into it quite a bit), with plenty of casual cruelty but none of the cinematic brio of Old Boy to redeem it.
Country: KOR
Technical: col/scope 121m
Director: Park Chan-wook
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Shin Ha-gyun, Bae Du-na
Synopsis:
A redundant employee who is also deaf uses his severance pay to obtain a kidney for his chronically ill sister, but is double-crossed and resorts instead to a kidnapping scheme which goes horribly wrong for all concerned.
Review:
Leaving aside for a moment the far from original premise, the film suffers considerably from obscurities and inconsistencies in the screenplay: why is the handover not made when the father comes up with the money? who is the woman being raped by the organ racketeers? why are sister and girlfriend so confusingly alike? The aim seems to be an ironic sympathy, given that none of the participants has a complete picture of what is going on, the hero's deafness being the most literal illustration of this; unfortunately that sympathy extends into self-pity. In short, this is a detached view of some of the social forces at work in contemporary Korea (yes, politics do come into it quite a bit), with plenty of casual cruelty but none of the cinematic brio of Old Boy to redeem it.