Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Decided to watch this movie after being recommended to me by ChemChampion plus the fact this was the 1st part of Chan-wook Park‘s vengeance trilogy, which was followed by Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Although it’s a trilogy, the stories have nothing to do with each other, just different vengeance stories. I already have Sympathy for Lady Vengeance on queue, but I wonder if it’ll surpass the excellence of Oldboy.

IMDb: 7.7/10 (3,783 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: C+ / Yahoo! Users: C+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating 56% / Average Rating: 6.2/10
Trailer
Amazon.com DVD

Spoilers: (Show)

The storyline is somewhat complicated. It involves a deaf brother, a sister dying from some liver problem and needs a transplant, and a crazy girlfriend. Their plan involved the kidnapping of a little girl to get the money for the operation, but it went horribly wrong as both his sick sister commited suicide and the kidnapee drowned. The father, so heart-broken decides the only thing to sooth his aching heart is vengeance.

With the storyline out of the way, I was discussing several points with ChemChampion which I didn’t really get from the movie.

So first of all, the kidnapping. It seems to have occurred just out of the blue. On one side, his sister was sitting on the swing holding one end of the rope. The brother was holding the other end of the rope, and his girlfriend was playing jump rope when the little girl appeared and got kidnapped. Who was looking after her at that time? Did the sister know about the girl / kidnapping beforehand?

Which brings me to the next question. It seemed the sister knew about the kidnapping the whole time, or at least it seemed that way, but when she found out it, she committed suicide believing to be of less burden to her brother. ChemChampion believes the sister was given a lie beforehand, but the girl seems to confide in the sister, even asking her why her father has such ‘poor’ friends.

Near the climax where the father slices the tendons from the feet totally reminded me of Hostel. Still very gross.

The green hair was also a bit weird. I understand it was to give the guy character at first, but it would be wise to get rid of his green hair once he started being hunt down. And actually drawing the drowning of the little girl and sending it to a radio station was just begging to be found.

I also couldn’t figure out what he was making at the factory. I’d assume it was electronics since I’m assuming he was kidnapping his boss’ daughter and he was a electrical engineer. However, it seemed like the were making tiny metal objects, like bullets.

Also, the gang at the end was a bit weird. We knew the girlfriend was crazy, but that gang just popped out of nowhere. She mentioned it before when she was getting electrocuted to death, but I thought either she was bluffing, or that these were hired from the old lady.

Ahhh… the old lady that grants wishes for a cost. At first I thought she went to hire the old lady to put together a gang to kill of the father that’s hunting them, but it seemed more logical she was just trying to find their base so deaf boy can go kill them. During the killing, there was a girl being raped. I’m guessing she was drugged and didn’t know what was going on. However, police later only found 3 bodies, which probably meant the girl ran away before the police got there.

The most disturbing scene was when the sister was screaming trying to sleep, and the 4 guys next door jerk off to her screaming, one behind the other in the same bed.

There were just too many holes (or unexplained things) in the plot.

I’m not sure if I’d recommend it. It was a very interesting movie, but left me puzzled and confused over many things.