Sympathy for Lady Vengeance VCD

That said, I'd have to say that this is the gentlest of the Vengeance trilogy (Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and Old Boy being parts one and two respectively). Perhaps that's because this is an illustration of the old saying, "Vengeance is a dish that's best served cold." Thirteen and a half years cold. And where the first two films focused on either impassioned revenge from the throes of grief, or dedicated revenge based on long years of implacable and growing hatred, this one follows Geum Jae as she calmly enacts her plan, concocted with care in prison.

We get the first hint that "Kindly Miss Geum Jae" is not so kindly in the opening scene, when she is released from prison. A church chorus, led by the disturbing Kim Byeong Ok (who played Mr. Han in Old Boy), welcomes her with a rousing hymn and the traditional gift of white tofu. She responds to the astonished preacher with a deadpan stare and a comment of "Why don't you go screw yourself."

Like Old Boy, this one makes lavish use of color. Geum Jae's new abode is a nook under the stairs with a zebra-striped red and black color scheme, ideally suited to the shrine to vengeance it becomes. Her new workplace, a patisserie, glows with warm gold, suggesting food and love and comfort. An abandoned school, site of the original crime and the ensuing vengeance, crumbles gray, dank and lifeless.

Once again, Park's visual compositions are superb. A Seoul alleyway, bordered by high stone walls, turned at night into a shadowy pit. A row of bereaved family members, decked out in plastic raincoats, sitting on a bench waiting their turn to wield their assorted carpentry tools on the killer. A row of metal sculptures, almost identical, of a woman holding aloft a man's severed head.

Considering that the Vengeance trilogy supposedly began as an offhand comment by Park, there is a real evolution here. In Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, the tragedy is driven by a society that cares for money more than people. In Old Boy, it's a chance comment and a forbidden liaison. In Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, we're faced with deliberate human malice and greed.

This, of course, makes the villain impossible to like. But that's the way it should be, because here Park focuses on the effect of long-anticipated vengeance on the one taking revenge. A likeable villain would only muddy the waters. And, as in all of Park's other films, things never work out the way we plan.

9 glass marbles out of 10

by Alison Jobling - heroic-cinema.com