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Sympathy for Lady Vengeance — movie review

by Chris ⋅ March 5, 2006 ⋅ Comment now ⋅ Subscribe RSS

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dreamlogic.net's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance [Criterion Collection] DVD Review Everything seems to be receiving the trilogy treatment these days. As long as a movie is somewhat successful you can bet on at least two more installments. Take a look at Fast and the Furious and X-men, both with third installments due out this year. Truly amazing trilogies are few and far between, and I’m afraid Park Chan Wook’s latest does nothing to buck that trend.

As with Oldboy, Sympathy Lady Vengeance concerns a person wrongly imprisoned for many years, only this time that person is a woman, Lee Geum-ja (Yeong-ae Lee), framed for killing a child. The shift from male to female protagonist is interesting, and as one might (correctly) assume it opens the door to a well planned, more refined vengeance than simple, masculine, impulsive atonement. I guess it’s safe to say Wook must subscribe to Rand’s theory of the absence of a true altruism (thanks, Kris.). Through acts of good will ranging from donating a kidney to a sickly robber to saving an adulteress from a years worth of forced cunnilingus, Lee Geum-ja commits each of her cellmates to a lifetime of indentured servitude. She even earns the nickname “Geum-ja the Kind Hearted” in the process. Her plan? We’re often reminded how complex and how amazing this plan is, but it pretty much boils down to having her friends help track down the scumbag responsible and killing him with a custom made WWII-era pistol.

As one would expect with Park’s previous efforts, the film is quite beautiful, with some awesome camera work and classical music to legitimize the events taking place, though still it proves lacking in the fields of story and character development; the usual style over substance issue. His decision for a nonlinear storyline seems to hinder more than help the film, as Geum-ja’s original predicament leading to her imprisonment isn’t explained until well into the second third of the film. Likewise the truly disgusting nature of the man responsible (played by Min-sik Choi) isn’t really revealed until after Geum Ja has blown off his toes (Don’t worry, that’s really not spoiling anything.). The film goes on roughly a half hour longer than it should, with the introduction of additional aggrieved parties and a group torture session that clearly must have served some sort of inspiration for Harry Knowles’ and Eli Roth’s Hostel. That said Park does infuse the film with quite a bit of humor, in spite the grim subject matter.
The elegant Yeong-ae Lee definitely brings a lot to Geum-ja, every joy dreamlogic.net's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance [Criterion Collection] DVD Review and pain the character experiences is readily apparent on her amazingly emotive face. But sadly any headway made towards true audience sympathy through Lee’s performance is all but shattered once Geum-ja opts to test her freshly-smithed gun on a cute, frightened puppy, even pausing to let it lick the cold steel before ending its life. Likewise Min-sik Choi gives a decent performance as the evil schoolteacher/child killer Mr. Baek, despite his scene of strangely emphatic Korean to English translation at gunpoint. Fans of the series will also notice cameo appearances by Sympathy for Mr Vengeance’s Ha-kyun Shin and Oldboy’s Byeing-ok Kim.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is a decent, though admittedly juvenile revenge film; far better than Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, though not quite as good as Oldboy, or even park’s Three Extremes entry. Park originally intended the film to transition backward and forward from color to black and white, though this vision was not realized until the Korean DVD release’s Fade to Black version of the film. The version I saw was the theatrical, pure color edition. I would be interested in seeing the differences between this and his intended version, though I can’t say that I would feel compelled to do it anytime soon.

About the Author:

dreamlogic.net -- CHRIS NELSON

Chris Nelson has been a film fanatic since age six. He is currently working as a technical writer and studying software engineering at San Jose State University.