Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance (DVD)
APPROX. 129 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2002 - MPA RATING: R
" While "Oldboy" was a tangled mystery that needed to be unraveled, "Mr. Vengeance" works in the opposite direction. It is a series of events that criss-crosses into a tightly-wound knot.
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Although "Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance" is the first in Chan-wook Park's revenge trilogy, it wasn't released in the States until after its successor, "Oldboy." While "Oldboy" was a tangled mystery that needed to be unraveled, "Mr. Vengeance" works in the opposite direction. It is a series of events that criss-crosses into a tightly-wound knot. Each decision the characters make lead them further down a dark and bloody path. One that they can never return from.
Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin) is a deaf, mute, and not-so bright factory worker with a seriously ill sister. The sister has sacrificed a lot to support Ryu and now desperately needs a new kidney. Discovering he has the wrong blood type, Ryu uses his life savings to find one on the black market. Instead, Ryu is double crossed. He wakes up the next morning stripped of his clothes, money, and a kidney. Without the money, Ryu can no longer afford the expensive operation when the hospital finds a suitable donor shortly afterwards. And to put a cherry on top of it, Ryu is fired for missing work.
Ryu's girlfriend, Yeong-mi Cha (Du-na Bae), sees herself as a revolutionary, yet doesn't seem to do much other than hand out flyers. Yeong-mi comes up with the idea to kidnap the daughter of Ryu's former boss, Dong-jin Park (Kang-ho Song). Yeong-mi justifies the abduction by stating that they won't harm the girl and the money they urgently need is a drop in the bucket for Park.
The kidnapping goes off without a hitch, but what happens next was never in the cards. Once she learns of the truth, Ryu's sister kills herself rather than be the cause of such a heinous crime. While Ryu buries her body, the girl accidentally drowns and her death sets Park on an unwavering search for revenge. At the same time, Ryu searches for the organ bootleggers to exact his own vengeance. Thus, the stage is set for the two to meet in a bloody, but tragic, confrontation.
Neither Ryu or Dong-jin Park ever reach the visceral rage of Oh Dae-su from "Oldboy." There is a detached coldness to their actions. They're more likely to calmly smoke a cigarette, rather than enjoy the fruits of their brutality. Partly because of his loss of hearing, Ryu seems to just sleepwalk through life with a naive obliviousness. In one scene, he eats noodles completely unaware that his sister painfully wails behind his back. On a side note, Ha-kyun Shin does a fine job as Ryu and if you'd like to see him do a total 180 check out "Save the Green Planet."
