A kidnapping goes terribly wrong in ultra-violent Korean flick
SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (Park Chan-wook, 2002)
Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick St. at Laight St.
Alternating Tuesday nights at 7:00 through April 6
Admission: free; reservations accepted at info@koreanculture.org or 212-759-9550
www.subwaycinema.com
www.koreanculture.org
Park Chan-wook kicked off his revenge trilogy with SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (even though the second film, OLDBOY, was the first one released in the States), a creepy, quirky tale that lays low for quite a while before busting loose with a massive splattering of the old ultra-violence. After deaf-mute Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin) fails miserably in a desperate, ridiculous attempt to get his dying sister (Ji-eun Lim) a kidney, the recently laid-off Ryu is convinced by his anarchist girlfriend, Youngmin (Doo-na Bae), to kidnap the four-year-old daughter (Bo-bae Han) of Park (Kang-ho Song), the man who owned the factory that kicked him out. But when the plan goes awry, both Ryu and Park become obsessed with avenging their torn-apart lives. Although the first half of the film is too slow and heads off in too many directions, the second half brings everything together, chock full of the kind of violence promised by the title. The film is being screened as part of Korean Movie Night presented at Tribeca Cinemas by the Korean Cultural Service and Subway Cinema.