An Underrated Vengeance!!! Review of Chanwook Park's "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance"

One thing you need to know about me is that I LOVE KOREAN FILMS!!!!I have read a lot of scathing reviews of this film that was hard to get (only through Asian imports). After Park's success with "Oldboy", they felt they should distribute and market this movie as a prequel, when it has no relation with "Oldboy". Instead, it is a start of a revenge trilogy courtesy of Chanwook Park. I should care less about the bad reviews of this movie, but it just got to me because they came into the notion with watching this movie as having superiority over "Oldboy". Please don't go into this film expecting that, and why would you. I don't want to see another "Oldboy", it was perfect enough. I felt that this movie, though filmed before "Oldboy", was more mature and developed the start of Park's style you would later see in "Oldboy". Enough comparing the two, I personally like this movie better. Now to talk about other people's review of this movie that complain that it was too slow. It has a pace to it, but not enough to make you go to sleep. It fact it's opposite, its scene after scene of chaotic madness that does string along a narrative. Rather than in "Oldboy" having a fast paced, jump-cuts with voice over narration to inject the story line, Park in this one just uses old fashioned juxtaposition. It is just characters going through visceral moments that the audience will feel in their seat while watching it. The story of a kid named Ryu, a deaf and dumb kid and factory worker who is need of a kidney for his dying sister. After learning that a donor is slim, he enlist the aid of an underground market to get a kidney. The woman who gives him a deal on a kidney only asks for his savings and his kidney for exchange. Later to learn that he is cheated and is in a desperate need of money and with the help of is girlfriend( a woman that is head of communist terrorist group) they decide to kidnap the daughter of a rich man. After the whole backfires, the whole movie goes in a whirlwind of violence and poetic justice. I notice that Park also comments the communist issue in Korea for a brief moment by making Ryu's girlfriend a woman who believes in communism and hates conglomerates. As heavy and violent the films gets for just inch of entertainment Park tries infuse some humor in it. He succeeds very well. I don't know if its Koreans in general of Korean cinema, but a string of mise en scene of violence Koreans always make it look beautiful. Not beautiful where its an overlaps of gore, but beautiful like poetry. Even when Park does an the over-top gore scene or visceral sick and twisted perverted scene he still captures a humanistic beauty where its not scary, but just good to look at. Korean have a good eye for that, their like painter when it comes to that and Park is one of them. He tends to use a lot of long takes or just one take of certain scenes to allow the actors to break down. He does comment on the whole politics of Korea, but not a whole lot. With his long takes and sequences and reminds me of French New Wave with the political commentary of Czech new Wave(Like "Closely Watched Trains"). As the start of Park's "revenge trilogy", it is an awesome opening. I personally prefer this over "Oldboy", but I can't compare while "Oldboy" is perfect , "Sympathy " has its flaws. Actually, I scratch that I also find this movie to have flaws, but redeems itself much more than "Oldboy". That's just me, and I hope someone agrees with me!!!!!!!! To capture the chaotic and poetic beauty of this movie, you have to see it up close on the big screen. Its an experience you won't forget!!!!!!!!! This is Aliye Nyoka saying "Goodnight and Good Luck!"