After Park Chan-wook’s breakthrough hit Joint Security Area broke box-office records and made him a successful director both critically and financially, it was only logical that he’d return to a more personal pet project with the newfound financial freedom.
The result is the first film in the revenge trilogy, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, an extreme, brutal and raw work that is in some ways, the perfect follow-up to JSA, as Park moves from a tale of forbidden friendship in his last feature, to one of justified vengeance. He trades in a conflict between two parties at a tense standstill, to a conflict between two parties tense in their obvious decay—by taking decisive action, Sympathy’s characters achingly move closer towards increasingly worse fates while we anticipate it all. Sympathy, by one interpretation, is a realization of what could have happened in JSA if both sides continually retaliated without any thoughts of self-preservation.
The cycle begins when Ryu, our recently unemployed, blue haired, deaf-mute protagonist needs a kidney for his sick sister. After an illegal organ deal gone bad, Ryu learns that a compatible kidney is available, but will cost him 10 million won. With less than a week to pay for the operation, his militant activist girlfriend convinces him to “safely” kidnap the young daughter of a factory boss and ask for a ransom, but things take a turn for the worse, spiraling into more cycles of perpetual vengeance.
However, Sympathy seems to be the anti-revenge film in many ways, as Park devotes every bit of screen time to empty journeys of retribution where characters pay back cruel acts of violence with crueler ones. The key difference is that it never satisfies like the typical catharsis of a revenge story. Sympathetic characters are pitted against each other and always given a motive.
Your everyday revenge flick would perhaps only tell the story of Song Kang-ho’s brooding factory owner, Dong Jin, a man out to punish the people responsible for the death of his daughter. When Park adds depth and sympathy to the people responsible for the daughter’s death, and reveals their motives, he deconstructs the revenge pic from within by disclosing each party’s circumstance and removing any simplistic ideas of good and evil, thus eliminating any semblance of relief in an act of vengeance.
And the result is quite possibly the most unfortunate sequence of events ever committed to film. Our lead characters are at once endearing and repulsive. Shin Ha-kyun transforms himself into Ryu, playing a pitiable victim and a wrathful murderer with silent, expressive acting, while Bae Du-na compliments him well as his tough, likeable girlfriend and support. Song Kang-ho does wonders with his sullen, seething character to justify his actions.
Sympathy is shot beautifully too with static shots, though it is difficult to appreciate with all the gritty violence within the frame. Many viewers will find the film simply unbearable—for both the emotional and physical pain present in the film. But they can be rest assured that none of it is exploitative. Park is precise in his pessimism and though it is a little rough around the edges, this is a one of a kind piece of art— relentless, bold and memorable.
Reviewed by Tarun
