Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance Review

"I’m a good person. I’m a hard worker." Those are the first words of a young factory worker, RYU (SHIN Ha-kyun) in Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. But we don’t hear them from his mouth, for Ryu is deaf and dumb.

I am quite well known for the fact that I dont like foreign films. The reason I dont is typically because I find asian films slow paced and boring. Park Chan Wook is a man who breaks that mold. He is easily one of my favorite directors, and film makers. He has a style that is better then any, and his ability to tell a story even though you may not speak the language is immense. I thought Old Boy was a kick ass movie, well move over, because Sympathy for Mr Vegeance is just that much better. who would have thought a movie with a deaf mute would translate well regardless of culture, mine not being Korean, and his not being Canadian.

The main character Ryu is deaf. He gets fired from his job and is trying to get a kidney for his sister. He manages to find organs on the black market, but now he needs the money to actually make it happen.

Pushed into a corner, Ryu and his girlfriendYoungmin decide to kidnap the 4-year-old daughter of Ryu’s old boss. Youngmin says there are good kidnappings and bad kidnappings, a good one being an unreported one where the victim is returned unhurt to the family. The pair is so convinced that there’s will be a good kidnapping that they worry that the little girl will enjoy being holed up with them so much that she won’t look sad or frightened in the ransom photo.

At the end of the day this good kidnapping goes bad. His sister ends up killing herself, the little girl drowns and his girlfriend gets tortured to death. What starts out as your typical slow moving and evolving story explodes in the last half hour like a Quentin Tarantino'esque massacre of carnage.

Anyone can blow people up and mutilate bodies but it takes a special kind of skill as a director to go beyond that. Even despite the obvious language barrier, since this is a foreign film, I still felt the attachment to the characters. The story was fast moving, action packed and even in the brutal ending, which is so fast paced it makes your head spin it is all inter-connected. I sat through the last half hour grinning, feeling sad, and grimacing in pain.

The story is masterfull, interconnected and just plain kick ass. It is rare a movie that makes you start off loving one group of characters, and hating another group, and by the end of the movie have it reverse two and even three times. I can not praise the story and script behind this movie enough. If more people put the thought and effort into a story like Park Chan Wook's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance we would all be enjoying movies all that much more. I have deliberately not told you any of the story, because I feel strongly you need to see it and enjoy it without me tainting it.

It is the story of two anguished men set out on intersecting paths to destruction, a fate that even their recognition of their similarities can’t forestall. I despise foreign films, and I loved this movie. So if you are a fan of Tartan flicks, or just foreign films in general you will truly love this movie.