Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Director: Park Chan-wook

2002 / 116min / 35mm

Fired from his factory job, Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun), a gentle deaf-mute man desperately trying to scrape together funds for his sister’s kidney transplant, falls in with a plan, hatched by his anarchist activist girlfriend (Bae Doona), to kidnap the daughter of the wealthy industrialist who fired him and ransom her for the necessary cash—and in so doing sets off on a path that terminates in an explosion of shockingly visceral violence. A brutal, claustrophobic film of escalating desperation, illustrating with grim logic how an ordinary man can be pushed into acts of extraordinary retaliation, with Bae’s performance bringing some welcome levity to the affair, even as her character acts as the catalyst for catastrophe to come.

Distributor: Kino Lorber