The Grandson: Has it got any sports in it?
Grandpa: Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...

** mild spoilers herein **

.. just to be clear, fencing of human organs and giants of industry.

Having just re-watched Oldboy the other day, I was anxious to watch another in Park Chan-wook’s vengeance trilogy for comparison. Love here on Letterboxd for individual members of the trilogy seemed to all over the map, but with Oldboy garnering the most love. While I really liked Oldboy, and Park’s stylistic canvas and ‘suspension of disbelief’ storyline, I didn’t totally fall in love with it as I had for JSA .. the only other in his cannon I…

Well, hello there, Park Chan-wook.

Eschewing hyper-stylization for a spectacularly balanced view of anti-heroes, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a more-than commendable example of humanizing villainous elements of a character to, not surprisingly, evoke sympathy for archetypes that should otherwise be considered irredeemable, cartoonish goons and morally bankrupt thugs. Rarely have I seen such devotion to twisting violent, senseless acts I would otherwise find unnecessarily brutal or redundant into essential components of balancing that fine line between protagonist and antagonist. Somehow, and I think it's mostly due to smartly giving each '-agonist' a full act to develop their character, motivations, moral failings, and justifications for such, the final confrontation is one where I couldn't decide which one I wanted to…

This one has been on my South Korean watch list for a very long time now. In fact, I hadn't seen either of the Vengeance films despite being a fan of both Korean cinema, and director Chan-wook Park. Despite some valid criticisms and vapid blind fanboyism, Oldboy is still one of my personal favorites. Which makes the fact that I held off on this one for so long, very strange to say the least.

But it's better late than never! Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a bold and unique first step in the Vengeance trilogy that is flawed, but ultimately a good movie when mixed in with Park's other films.

The story runs in the vein of other South Korean…

Chan-wook Park's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a dark and disturbing, but strangely beautiful masterpiece of a thriller. It's odd just how different this is from the other Park movie I've seen, Oldboy, which is far more indulgent in its violence. It is a great movie on its own term but doesn't quite reach the emotional height of his first entry in his vengeance trilogy. Sympathy is a quietly affecting movie that creeps up on you and before you know it delivers with moments of genuine shock and anguish, elevated by the eerie calmness of the film. It is rather slow-paced and likes to keep the camera static, the dialogue scarce. The performances by the main cast is adequately understated…

Chan-wook Park’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is both an emotional and suspenseful roller-coaster. The audience is taken through multiple lives, and their high and low points. The films events are triggered by one happening, and from there, a chain reaction causes death, misunderstanding and of course, vengeance. Having only seen one other film from the Vengeance Trilogy before, I could predict the films central theme, but apart from that, I was completely unaware of any events that would be unfolding.

The simplest way to explain Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance was to think of it as a cross breed between his 2000 film JSA and Joon-ho Bong’s Memories of Murder. That being said, there were also many elements similar to Oldboy.…

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is an interesting philosophical exercise spoiled by a style that's constantly sabotaging the film's underlying message. I appreciate Park Chan-Wook's intention to subvert a somewhat staid genre by showing the ugly (and ultimately unsatisfactory) side of revenge, but I can't rectify this stance with the obvious joy that Park has in telling this seedy, nasty tale.

The story is labyrinthine enough to defy easy description, but I'll say that it involves the interwoven tales of two people (one a deaf factory worker, the other a powerful industrialist) doing horrible things to each other (and having horrible things done to them), first out of desperation and then out of revenge. It's a very clever setup, as the…

Chan-wook Park’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is both an emotional and suspenseful roller-coaster. The audience is taken through multiple lives, and their high and low points. The films events are triggered by one happening, and from there, a chain reaction causes death, misunderstanding and of course, vengeance. Having only seen one other film from the Vengeance Trilogy before, I could predict the films central theme, but apart from that, I was completely unaware of any events that would be unfolding.

The simplest way to explain Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance was to think of it as a cross breed between his 2000 film JSA and Joon-ho Bong’s Memories of Murder. That being said, there were also many elements similar to Oldboy.…

The Grandson: Has it got any sports in it?
Grandpa: Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...

** mild spoilers herein **

.. just to be clear, fencing of human organs and giants of industry.

Having just re-watched Oldboy the other day, I was anxious to watch another in Park Chan-wook’s vengeance trilogy for comparison. Love here on Letterboxd for individual members of the trilogy seemed to all over the map, but with Oldboy garnering the most love. While I really liked Oldboy, and Park’s stylistic canvas and ‘suspension of disbelief’ storyline, I didn’t totally fall in love with it as I had for JSA .. the only other in his cannon I…