Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance
Park’s “Revenge Trilogy”—a high watermark of early aughts South Korean cinema, each film a stylish standalone thriller united to the rest by the theme of retribution—is represented here with leadoff film Mr. Vengeance, the ruthless, bruising tale of a factory worker forced to find work in the black-market organ trade, and by the trilogy’s gruesome conclusion, Lady Vengeance, about a woman serving a prison sentence for a crime she didn’t commit, emerging from long captivity with payback on her mind. Filmmaking both elegant and ferocious in equal measure, these are howls of cinematic rage not soon to be forgotten.
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Lady Vengeance
Directed by Park Chan Wook | 115 mins | 2005
The capper of Park’s “Revenge Trilogy” follows a woman wrongfully imprisoned for kidnapping and killing a six-year-old boy, as she meticulously lays the groundwork for an elaborate plan of retribution, then sets it into merciless motion on her release.... -
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
Directed by Park Chan Wook | 116 mins | 2002
Fired from his factory job, the deaf, gentle Ryu finds work in the underworld—and begins on a path that will end in an explosion of visceral violence. A brutal, claustrophobic film of escalating desperation, illustrating with grim logic how an ordinary...
