SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE and LADY VENGEANCE ***1/2 (out of ****) Directed & co-written by Chan-wook Park
SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (BOKSUNEUN NAUI GEOT) Starring Kang-ho Song, Ha-kyun Shin, Du-na Bae, Ji-Eun Lim, Seung-beom Ryu, and Bo-bae Han Co-written by Jae-sun Lee, Mu-yeong Lee, Yong-jong Lee 2002 129 min R
		LADY VENGEANCE (aka SHED TEARS FOR LADY VENGEANCE) (CHINJEOLHAN GEUMJASSI) Starring Yeong-ae Lee and Choi Min-sik Co-written by Seo-Gyeong Jeong 2005 (US release 2006) 112 min R
A deaf, penniless factory worker and his girlfriend to kidnap a rich man’s daughter to pay for his sister’s life-saving surgery.  Their plan is perfect.  But something goes wrong.  Something always goes wrong. “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” is one of those closing-web neo-noir nightmares where everything resolves itself in a third act of gruesome, diabolical perfection.  Everything that happens MUST happen, no matter how horrid. “Sympathy” juxtaposes wrenching, sincere, and gruesome sequences with macabre humor.  But that is what the title says – “Sympathy” and “Vengeance.”  We feel for someone even while he does something awful.  In the same way that something can be horrible and strangely noble, it is also awful and strangely comical.  The best illustration from the film is when we cut from an intense shot of men fighting over an X-acto knife to a pair of slack-jawed observers seeing it all in long-shot.  Is it funny or is it gruesome?  This explains my appreciation for director Chan-wook Park, who is fascinated by ambivalence.  His delightful film “Oldboy” is another similarly-titled paradox (it’s also the second in the “Vengeance” trilogy, beginning with “Sympathy” and concluding with “Lady”).  Everybody is loved by somebody in the “Vengeance” universe – even the worst scumbag has a mother who loves him. Park tells the film in a self-consciously arty and detached style that may bother many but I enjoy.  Despite all the violence and corpses we never actually see someone die.  The mathematical precision of “Sympathy’s” plot is matched by the geometric precision of the compositions.  Entire scenes involving lots of movement are often done from only one or a handful of camera set-ups, perfectly positioned to capture everything, no matter how much the players move and chase each other around, bashing heads in with bats and what-not.  The handful of hand-held sequences are jarring – you know something’s about to happen. The final installment to the trilogy is “Lady Vengeance,” in which a woman framed for murder emerges from her prison sentence to track down the man who framed her.  Now here’s a movie that lives up to its title:  there’s vengeance, and there’s a lady.  The first half of the movie frustrated me with how meandering and disjointed it is, with flashbacks jumping back and forth.  I think the movie might be overall tighter and more entertaining if it had been chronological.  But I think what Park wants is to give “Lady” a woman’s point-of-view, in which the way all things connect is emphasized. Everything leads back to memories and stream-of-consciousness, whereas “Oldboy” and especially  “Mr. Vengeance” are strongly male in their mechanical single-mindedness.  A lone man sets himself relentlessly on a task and does so to the exclusion of all else, as if forgetting his life.  I found myself frustrated with “Lady,” hoping she would just “get on with it!” but that was Park’s plan, to let us know that this would be a movie that gives pause and considers revenge rather than just carries it out.  The woman’s movie is about planning and waiting and everything coming to fruition.  “Oldboy” is a mystery from the detective’s POV while “Mr. Vengeance” is more spontaneous — “this went wrong, so let’s try this.”  Like in a Western, women represent the civilizing element.  Lady’s revenge is cold, calculated, decided—the true steeliness of women.  She wants everyone involved to fully understand why she (and eventually they) is doing it.  Whereas male revenge is a kind of madness that can’t be applied to society at large, Lady wants her acts to make sense to others, launching into the film’s very creepy third act, about how much revenge is socially acceptable or justifiable.  It’s a fitting conclusion, a culmination of the whole trilogy, which plays like a precursor to “Murder on the Orient Express.”  Revenge is dissected to lengths which you might either consider just or horrific.  That depends on you. It’s fun spotting the players from the previous two movies in “Lady Vengeance.”  Oldboy is the villain and his girlfriend is here somewhere.  The villain from “Oldboy” is brought in only near the very end and his henchman is the preacher who tries to save Lady.  Mr. Vengeance is one of the villain’s thugs and one of the revolutionaries from “Mr. Vengeance” is a bereaved father. Finished Friday, December 15, 2006 Copyright © 2006 Friday & Saturday Night                                                                                                                         Back to home.