to put it mildly, i was blown away, at the time, it was the coolest, most moving movie i’d seen… i think it still is.

and yes, i thought of the wagah border too.

ìThere are good kidnapping and bad kidnapping in this worldÖ.,î Bae Du-na speaks softly Choi Minsik in Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.

Having read the plot of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (SFLV), it stirs up a series of overlapping images from Parkís previous movies on revenge. Woojin (Old Boy) whispers into Daesooís ear, ìAhÖnow what fun should I (Park) look for in life?î Besides, itís always inevitably intriguing to dissect and put together a series of movies on a common theme however fictitious it may be.

The first impression from the script is the mechanical side of the plot is quite similar to that of Kill Bill. But that is about all the similarities I could find. The rest seem all vintage Park Chanwook. The reason that Keumja (our heroin in SFLV) is not flying around in a yellow jumper suit and slashing heads off with a samurai sword lies in a simple notion of Parkís narrative. Conscious of the mainstream formulaic pitfalls, Park chose to tell a story about revenge not from a self-absorbed reproduction, but from a dialectic lens. While the cameo appearances of many actors and actresses from the first two installments provide obvious clues, the narrative itself shows an agonizing effort to reach a new synthesis. I think perhaps this struggle could be the reason that the reviews are so dichotomous. There are neither the socio-economically interlocked dilemma of SFMV nor the highly stylized longing for oblivion of OB in SFLV. The ending of SFLV seems to go a place that most people would rather not contemplate especially when they can so easily relate to the urge of vengeance in Keumja.

On the surface, the plot tells a story where one can see Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (SFMV) as well as Old Boy (OB) in this third installment. Fans of Park can easily see that the child abduction in SFLV draws eerie parallels to SFMV. The parallels are almost too simple in that the protagonists from both movies are inescapably enmeshed in the extremely personal and petty nature of their motivation and thus completely oblivious of the heinous nature of the crime.

But the point of bifurcation is in the end. While SFMV reached a zero-sum ending with an identifiable linear story, SFLV goes back to the emotional void of having finished a long narrative of revenge. While SFMV depicts the irreconcilable conflict between classes in the Marxian sense and OB submerges itself in the pure aesthetics of revenge, SFLV delineates the futility of hoping salvation in vengeance. This is nothing new in movies. In a way, Park tries to end his trilogy with a cautious remark that the end of revenge never leads to redemption and in fact the protagonist is left in a deeper agony with no catharsis in sight.

ìThere are good kidnapping and bad kidnapping in this world..î ironically murmurs the last confession of Park that there are no good revenge or bad revenge. The interlocking nature of revenge in SFMV and the personalized style of OB tumble and struggle in SFLV to say something quite simple:
(chinese characters might not show up properly here). That is, the nature of an object lies within the emptiness of the object.

Keumja desperately longs for a sense of redemption but itís as futile as the last scene of the movie where she wails with her face crumbling in a snow-white cake. This scene carries a very different meaning of tragic closure from OB. The trilogy has come to an end, but the prayer of atonement goes on long after the movie is over. Although Park might not have intended this, but SFLV might be the most visually exuberant and emotionally tolling entertainment movies fused with a hint of morality. Now, that might be a shock to a lot of people who have seen only Old Boy.