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Sympathy For Mr Vengeance aka Boksuneun naui geot
Running time: 129 minutes
Directed by: Park Chan-wook
Starring: Song Kang-ho and Shin Ha-kyun
IMDB rating: 7.8
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0310775/
Sympathy For Mr Vengeance is directed by Park Chan-wook, who was also the man at the helm for Oldboy, which I watched last week. Along with Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, they form what is known as the vengeance trilogy; a group of films which are related by a common theme, but do not feature any of the same characters.
I wasn't quite sure what to make of SFMV at first. Considering the above, I had expectations of it having strong similarities to Oldboy, but that isn't the case. A lot of the early events are sad more than anything else, and several are hard to watch.
Given the title, it's easy to make assumptions about what the film will be like. The bad guy does something bad to the good guy, and then the good guy goes after him, rights the wrongs, and all is OK in the world. But of course, life isn't really like that, often there are good people with understandable motives, who are driven to extreme acts by a mixture of bad circumstance and their own mistakes. So it is with this film.
A deaf man lives with his sister, who is very ill and will die without a kidney transplant. The hospital don't have any organs available, and things look bleak. Around the same time, he is also made redundant. In desperation, he goes to see a group of black market doctors, and agrees to pay them the money he has and to give them one of his own kidneys, if they'll save his sister's life. Instead they rip him off.
The hospital then contact and say that they have found a donor and will be able to save his sister's life, but he can no longer afford the operation. His girlfriend suggests that they kidnap someone and hold them for ransom, and that's when things really start to go wrong for Ryu and those around him...
This is obviously a film with a lot of thought put into it, and is one that leaves an impression upon the viewer. There are no easy answers, and the behaviour of the main characters is as understandable as it is extreme.
Although this is not the best of the films I've watched recently, it is the one that I'd most like to see again sometime soon. Very good film.
8/10
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