Review of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Let's forget about the extreme violence for a moment, if that's possible, and just say than Chan-wook Park is one of contemporary cinema's great visual stylists and that "Sympathy for Mr Vengance" is a terrific looking picture. It's also highly original, a kidnap drama with a deaf mute hero who kidnaps a little girl so he can get the money to pay for his sister's kidney transplant. You might even say it would be darkly funny if the 'comedy' were more pronounced but then comedy isn't really Park's style. His style is violence which, for maximum effect, he keeps in the background until he's ready to spring it on us in a welter of blood-letting. as well as having a remarkable eye for composition; sometimes the sheer beauty of his images allows him to get away with things that other directors couldn't. "Sympathy for Mr. Vengance" is an horrific film with its horrors delivered so matter-of-factly they shake you up in ways more conventional films don't and I can't imagine an American mainstream director treating this material in quite the same way. This may yet prove to be his masterpiece but I'm not sure I'd ever want to see it again.