Product Description

Unable to afford proper care for his sister dying from kidney failure, Ryu turns to the black market to sell his own organs only to end up cheated of his life savings. His girlfriend urges Ryu to kidnap the daughter of wealthy industrialist Dong-jin, who recently laid him off. Ryu agrees, but unforeseen tragedies turn an innocent con into a merciless quest for revenge. Bound by their personal losses and deep-seated anger, the two men are thrust into a spiral of destruction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5727 in DVD
• Brand: Genius
• Released on: 2005-11-22
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Korean
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 129 minutes

Amazon.com
Before he made the notorious cult hit Oldboy, South Korean director Chan-wook Park created Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, an equally gruesome yet elegant meditation on revenge. Desperate to get a kidney transplant for his dying sister, a deaf and dumb young man named Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin, Save the Green Planet!) kidnaps the daughter of a wealthy industrialist named Park (Kang-ho Song, Shiri). Despite Ryu's best intentions, things go horribly awry, setting in motion a series of escalating revenges--to describe the plot in more detail would undercut the movie, because much of its power comes from the spare and skillful storytelling. Chan-wook Park is careful to ground the audience in the characters' emotional lives; when the violence begins, the bloody events unfold with the hypnotic power of the revenge tragedies of the Shakespearean era, which had over-the-top plots and littered the stage with bodies, yet were full of rich poetry. Park's eye for startling images and careful editing creates a visual poetry, grotesque yet often haunting. Certainly not a film for everyone--squeamish viewers had best beware, while anyone who wants their violence flagrant and guilt-free will be disappointed--but cinephiles looking to have their hearts squeezed along with their stomachs will enjoy Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Goes Beyond Old Boy
Old Boy is like eating cooked salmon.

This is like cutting into raw tuna.

I have never seen anything like this. This is more disturbing than any American/Japanese cinema combined.
Horrifyingly disjointed, disturbingly real--because it could happen to any one of us.

These Koreans. They can make movies. Jesus Christ.

Blood-soaked masterpiece...
As so many other people I decided to watch this film because I was impressed by the brilliant "Oldboy" and wanted to check the previous work of this fine Korean director. Although "Sympathy for Mr Vengeance" is a little bit less impressive than "Oldboy", it is very powerful with some very brutal scenes of nasty revenge methods. The story has many surprises, and some back and forth movement regarding the time sequence, but the finale is unpredictable and hard hitting indeed!

First of Chan-Wook Park's Revenge Trilogy
Korean cinema continues to impress as Chan-Wook Park proves "JSA: Joint Security Area" was no fluke. "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" is not an easy movie to stomach. It contains some of the most graphic scenes of violence I've seen in a long time, and many of the subject matters it deals with are unsettling and downright depressing. It's an absolutely gripping film, however. As with JSA, the major strength is the solid premise and plot -- a chain reaction of tragedies of Shakespearian proportions. There is no clear line between good and evil -- it's merely a conflict between two groups of people who just happen to be on the opposite sides of the fence (metaphorically, this time).

There is very little dialogue (Park says he tried to limit it to bare minimum), but the superb acting (especially Du-Na Bae playing the villain against type and Ha-Kyun Shin as the deaf/mute protagonist) and stylish widescreen shots are more than enough to carry the story.

This is the first installment of Chan-wook Park's Revenge Trilogy (followed by "Oldboy" and "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance").