Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

A couple years back, I saw Oldboy, a South Korean film from 2003. It ended up being the best movie I saw in 2012. I later learned that its director, Park Chan-wook, made two other movies in the early 2000s and that together the three are known as the The Vengeance Trilogy. Though they share no common characters or events, all three films share the same thematic focus of, well, revenge. Here's the first film in the "trilogy." Brace yourselves, because it's downright harrowing.

A deaf and mute man - Ryu - learns that his sister needs a kidney transplant. He isn't a match to donate, and once he gets laid off from his shitty factory job, he can no longer afford to bump her up the transport recipient list. Instead Ryu explores the black market, where he cuts a deal; he'll donate his own kidney, along with his bulk savings of ten million won (about $928 in 2014 according to Google) in exchange for a matching kidney for his sister. Lo and behold, he's double-crossed, and he wakes up from his surgery with no kidney and no money. Ironically enough, a donor for his sister has now been found; but Ryu's got no money to pay for the surgery. So he and his girlfriend concoct a scheme to kidnap his former employer's daughter and hold her ransom for the money. It appears to work! But once Ryu's sister catches wind of this, she kills herself so as not to be a burden. South Korea! So Ryu heads back to this riverbed they used to play in as kids, to bury his sister, with his ex-boss's kidnapped daughter in tow. She falls into the river, screaming for him, but deaf old Ryu can't hear her and she drowns.

That's about the halfway point. Pretty shitty so far, huh? So now Ryu takes it upon himself to go take out the organ dealers who fucked him over in the first place. Meanwhile the dead girl's father takes it upon himself to find out who kidnapped his daughter and exact his own revenge. What follows is an intense, gory, violent hour of two men on motivated rampages. I absolutely loved it.

Oldboy was a better movie, but Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance was more visually effective with its punches, opting for tightly focused and deliberately-paced justice killings where Oldboy had a much more action-movie-choreographed pattern of violence. And by the way, please excuse the silly title; the original Korean title translates to something like "Vengeance is Mine," which although generic is far more adequate; after all, which of our two angry vengeance killers is the titular "Mr. Vengeance?"

I know foreign films aren't for everyone, but honestly, there's so little dialogue in this one that it's great even if you're turned off by subtitles or voiceover dubs. Check this out. Or, give Oldboy a try. Soon enough I'll get to the third movie in the trilogy, Lady Vengeance. That one's original title translates to "Kind-hearted Gemun-ja," so your guess is as good as mine for now.