Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
Brutally nihilistic, hard-boiled Asian thriller form Chan-Wook Park
The furthest distance between two points is always between a kidnapper and his money. In "Sympathy for Mr Vengeance", though, getting the money is easy. It's staying alive long enough to spend it that's the problem.
"Sympathy for Mr Vengeance" stars Shin Ha-kyun as Ryu, a deaf and dumb steelworker who kidnaps his boss' daughter in order to pay for a kidney operation for his beloved sister. Nothing goes according to plan, and what ought to have been easy money soon turns into blood money.
Director Park Chan-Wook says he wanted to create a hard-boiled Asian thriller that eschewed the overblown visual excess of recent Korean efforts in favour of a darker, more realistic delivery.
Although cinematographer Kim Byung-II has an eye for composing quite unusual shots, Park refuses to substitute bravura technical ability for emotional engagement.
Suitably, for a movie about a deaf-and-dumb hero, the audio track veers from moments of uncanny silence to a screeching jazz saxophone to even more disturbing sound effects of torsos being cracked open, heads beaten with baseball bats, and, in the most excruciating moment, a torture scene involving electrodes and earlobes.
Brutally nihilistic, this is one of the best Korean films to have hit these shores in a very long time. (J. Russell, BBC)
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
Wed September 28, 2005, 7:00 & 9:30, Muenzinger Auditorium
129min, South Korea, 2002, in Korean w/English subtitles, R - Color
Tickets
10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission.
$7 w/UCB student ID,
$7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.
Parking
Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the
Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters
along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.
RTD Bus
Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus
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