Movie Review: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

2002. Directed by Chan-wook Park. Starring Kang-ho Song. American movie portrayals of “vengeance” are crowd-pleasers. Mel Gibson has practically adopted the motivation as a screen persona. Vengeance as a plot device kept Charles Bronson employed for many uninspired years. Picture Harrison Ford in almost any movie in the past decade-and-a-half and he’s probably yelling, “Give me back my daughter!” or “I want to know what happened to my wife!” while the veins in his neck threaten to secede. The Korean director, Chan-wook Park, has explored vengeance in a trio of movies — Oldboy, Lady Vengeance and, in the first of …

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