Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Here's a DVD that I hadn't watched since I bought it at Borders ten years ago.

I had forgotten the whole thing except one gruesome scene at the end, so it was like watching a new film for me. I loved it.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is the first of the Vengeance Trilogy by Chan Wook Park. This came out in 2002, followed by OldBoy in 2003 and Lady Vengeance in 2005. The movies are connect thematically, but not by plot of character.

One of the main things I noticed about Sympathy...were the camera angles and overall cinematography. Chan Wook Park shot almost everything with a still camera. Lots of deep staging, very little tracking or steady-cam work. Lots of wide angles and deep focus. I liked the approach. It made everything feel very deliberate and majestic. The audio was really important, too. I feel like this film was all about ambient soundscapes. The protagonist is deaf and dumb so a lot of the "dialogue" is ambient sound.

I'm sure you've seen OldBoy. People have been talking about a Hollywood remake since it first made it to America ten years ago. I'm sure it'll happen sooner or later. I feel that OldBoy is the best of the three films, but the other two are well worth seeking out. They're all fantastic.

I've literally never seen a Korean film that I haven't liked. They have a slower, meditative quality to them than Japanese flicks, for instance. Chan Wook Park is brilliant. I also think Ki-duk Kim is amazing and recommend anything you can see by either director. Bong jun ho is nothing to sneeze at, either. I feel like Korean cinema strikes a really good balance between Chinese and Japanese storytelling.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is not unlike OldBoy. It's brutal at times, but that's not the core of the film. It's got a great plot with lots of twists. Inventive characters. Great cinematography, editing, and pacing. Good acting. It's original. It's the whole package. I've posted the trailer above and a link on YouTube to the whole film. I'm sure it's available on Netflix, too...Watch it!