Thursday, May 15, 2008

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Boksuneun naui geot)


I cannot begin to express how simply fucking awesome this film is. Part of Park Chan-wook's vengeance trilogy (including Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance), it follows a series of events leading through a bungled kidnapping and the outcome.

Oldboy was the first one I watched a while back (although I re-watched recently and didn't post so I'll do that after this one, also a re-watch), after hearing a lot of good things about it. Mr. Vengeance is the precursor to Oldboy, but the stylistic similarities are most definitely there, not so much with Lady Vengeance.

The film is beautiful. The lighting, framing, performances, everything about it. The way that Park is not afraid to hold a shot, using single shots for entire scenes, something a lot of Western directors aren't so confident with.

The performances are amazing, the lead character is a deaf-mute, which immediately changes the game in how the story is told and again, there's no trying to 'PC' the guy for the sake of it. One of the other stunning performance comes from Song Kang-ho (pictured), playing a TOTALLY different role from his one in The Host! He's in a fair few Korean films so check him out.

The film is hard to deal with at times, it's slow paced, but you want to stick with it, not quite a full on and gruesome as Oldboy, but still potent enough. AWESOME!




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