Film Review: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)

One of the more interesting cultural trends of the 21st century is the seamless integration of Korean popular culture into the global mainstream. Beyond the ubiquitous waves of K-pop and the intricate narratives of K-dramas, South Korean cinema has been a formidable contributor to this phenomenon, with its distinct blend of visceral storytelling and stylistic bravura. Few figures deserve more credit for this than Park Chan-wook, and his thematically linked Vengeance Trilogy stands as a foundational pillar. While Oldboy (2003) often garners the lion’s share of international acclaim, it is the trilogy’s first, most unsparing instalment, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), that established the brutal, morally complex template. A film of stark contrasts and unrelenting pessimism, it remains a challenging, flawed, yet undeniably powerful work that foreshadowed the director’s ascent.

In terms of genre, the film is best described as a bizarre, often jarring amalgamation of crime thriller, social realist drama, black comedy, and Jacobean tragedy. Park refuses to let the narrative settle into a comfortable groove, shifting tonal gears with a disquieting abruptness that both confounds and mesmerises. The plot follows Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun), a deaf-mute factory worker caring for his sister, who requires a kidney transplant. His desperation—exacerbated by wrongful dismissal—leads him to a black-market organ harvesting ring, which leaves him penniless and literally missing a kidney. His radical activist girlfriend, Cha Yeong-mi (Bae Doona), proposes kidnapping his former employer’s daughter for ransom. In a cruel twist of fate, they instead abduct Yu-sun (Han Bo-bae), the young daughter of Park Dong-jin (Song Kang-ho), who happens to be a friend of Ryu’s actual boss.

The scheme unfolds in Ryu’s claustrophobic apartment, where his sister mistakes the captive for a charge Ryu is babysitting. The ransom is paid, but tragedy compounds tragedy: Ryu’s sister discovers the truth and commits suicide; distraught, Ryu takes her body to a riverbank to bury her, during which Yu-sun wanders off and drowns. Thus begins a dual quest for vengeance. Dong-jin, consumed by grief, dedicates himself to hunting his child’s kidnapper. Simultaneously, Ryu exacts a gruesome toll on the organ thieves. Dong-jin eventually captures and tortures Yeong-mi to find Ryu, ignoring her warnings that her anarchist comrades will avenge her. He succeeds, bringing Ryu to the same riverbank and subjecting him to a slow, bloody death. In the film’s final, bitterly ironic twist, Dong-jin is then cornered and stabbed by Yeong-mi’s middle-aged anarchist cell, leaving both avengers dead in a cycle of utterly futile violence.

It is no great surprise that Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance failed to replicate the critical and commercial fervour that later greeted Oldboy. The latter’s operatic style and shocking narrative revelations proved more palatably thrilling. Sympathy, by contrast, is a work of almost unremitting bleakness. Its violence is not stylised in the manner of Oldboy’s hallway hammer fight, but raw, messy, and deeply unpleasant. Park shows little mercy to his audience or his characters: a child drowns, a young woman is tortured with electrodes, and bodies pile up with a nihilistic relentlessness. Certain directorial choices feel deliberately provocative, such as the scene where Ryu’s young neighbours masturbate while listening to his sister’s agonised moans, or the lingering, clinical shot from inside Yu-sun’s cremation coffin. These moments suggest a director at times seeming to relish in darkness, testing the viewer’s endurance.

Yet, to focus solely on its brutality is to overlook Park’s formidable technical skill. His penchant for immaculate, geometrically precise shot composition is already fully formed, lending the film a cold, Kubrickian aesthetic. The cramped interiors of Ryu’s apartment contrast with the desolate, wide-shot riverbank, visualising the characters’ emotional imprisonment and existential emptiness. This formal control amplifies the horror, making the violence feel not gratuitous, but an inevitable extrusion of the film’s corrupted world.

The film is not without significant flaws, primarily in its pacing and exposition. The first act is languid to a fault, meandering through Ryu’s plight with a quasi-documentary slowness that borders on tedious. Key plot points, particularly the motives and connections of the organ-trafficking ring, are confusingly presented. The narrative only finds its propulsive, tragic rhythm in the second half, once Dong-jin’s pursuit begins. Here, the film’s structure becomes more compelling, intercutting his investigation with Ryu’s own vengeful spree and the hapless, comic interventions of two bumbling policemen. This latter section evokes the narrative entanglement and sudden eruptions of violence found in prime Tarantino, though Park’s sensibility remains distinctly more fatalistic.

Another notable shortcoming is the relative lack of a conventional soundtrack. Where Oldboy would later use Vivaldi to unforgettable effect, Sympathy is often accompanied only by diegetic sound—the hum of appliances, the rush of water, the silence of Ryu’s world. This austerity, while artistically defensible, contributes to the film’s oppressive, emotionally draining atmosphere, making it an actively unpleasant viewing experience for many.

Furthermore, the film’s chilly reception among some Western critics, particularly in the US, can be attributed to more than just its violence. Park dabbles explicitly in anti-capitalist and anarchist political commentary, a strand that feels integral yet awkwardly integrated. Yeong-mi distributes flyers calling for a boycott of US goods—a detail that, in the post-9/11 climate of 2002, likely struck American audiences as jarringly polemical. The critique of systemic failure—the uncaring corporation, the ineffective police, the predatory black market—is clear, but it sits uneasily alongside the more primal, personal tragedies, never cohering into a fully satisfying thematic whole.

Ultimately, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a film that rewards the patient and the resilient. For those willing to endure its two-hour odyssey into despair, it offers masterful filmmaking, exceptional performances—particularly Song Kang-ho’s transformation from affable businessman to hollow-eyed revenant—and a memorably unforgiving vision. It is a flawed work, marred by pacing issues and a perhaps overly sadistic gaze, but it is also the essential crucible in which Park Chan-wook forged his signature style. Its relentless examination of the cyclical, self-consuming nature of vengeance paved the way for the more refined, yet equally devastating, triumphs of Oldboy and Lady Vengeance. As such, it remains a crucial, if deeply uncomfortable, cornerstone of modern Korean cinema’s global ascent.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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