Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance

Deaf-mute Ryu works in a factory. His seriously ill sister needs a kidney transplant Ryu can’t donate his as they are incompatible. After being fired from his job, Ryu illegally sells one of his kidneys to a gang, who take it without paying him. Youngmi, Ryu’s girlfriend, suggests kidnapping the daughter of Dongjin, a rich industrialist, and asking for a ransom before setting her free. Things, however, go decidedly wrong when Dongjin sets his heart on finding the two young kidnappers at all costs. This is one of the most harrowing and destabilizing films of contemporary Korean cinema - certainly the most disturbing of the year. Following the mega-hit JSA - Joint Security Area (screened at the Far East Film Festival in 2001), the producers have given the director, Park, a free run. Park has taken this as his opportunity to go back to an idea he originally had in the mid-90’s, when, due to its bleakness, he was unable to find the necessary funding for the film. The direction is both thorny and off-putting. The blockbuster grandeur of JSA (also most effective) has been entirely left aside here, for an almost forbidding tightness, not to mention the below-the-belt punches and the explicit brutality. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is in no way a falling parable but rather a continuous spiral - with no means of escape or interruption. With no beginning and no end - it tells us that violence is the very air we breathe - therefore, inevitable and elusive. There is no pulp pretext: in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance blood is an icy whirlpool from which you cannot escape. Power too, in a world where class definitely matters, is a game which boomerangs back on you. With the marvelous performances of Song and Shin (both in JSA), along with the daringly unusual unharmonious music by Pae Hyun-jin, Sympathy is a cinematic tour in the blackness of soul and society. The film has shocked audiences at some Festivals - managing, however, to persuade them of its need to exist. This is a film for the strong of stomach - you need to be ready for it. It comes as no surprise that not many Korean viewers went to see it - even while it was being shot there was talk of the harshness of some of the scenes.