Forget Kill Bill.
Forget Quentin Tarantino.
There is one filmatic revenge series to obsess over and it doesn’t come from the mighty shores of California. Chan-wook Park’s final installment to his vengeance trilogy, Lady Vengeance, has just been released on DVD in the US and it is an awesome way to end the series, indeed.
Where Tarantino gave us two films full of exquisite style and very little substance, Park finds time to explore meaning between the blood letting.
Where Tarantino created an amazing genre-bending exploitation masterpiece, Park has made a violent, stylish trilogy that is more than just eye candy.
That’s all the Kill Bill references I’ll make, I promise.
Lady Vengeance (which was forever named Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, until the good people at Tartan decided it needed a little spiffing) is a tad slower, and less action oriented than the other two in the trilogy, but it is the final in the series and like Kill Bill Vol. 2 (darn it, ok I swear that was the last one, for real this time) the series needs a little grounding.
Geum-Ja Lee (Yeong-ae Lee) is sent to prison at the age of 19 for the abduction and murder of a small child. In truth she did not murder or abduct the boy (she merely helped keep him) but takes the blame for her accomplice, Mr. Baek (Min-sik Choi) because he threatens her own child with violent harm if she does not.
She spends 13 years in prison for those crimes and while there she makes nice with everybody. She is the perfect inmate – she finds religion, helps out, cares for an elderly inmate, and even donates an organ – all the while she meticulously plots her revenge.
Upon release she uses her former cellmates to help get her revenge, and extols it in true Chan-wook Park fashion.
Although served deathly cold, the revenge is not so sweet. In fact it is quite bitter and does not relieve Geum-Ja of guilt like she thought it would. Like all of the films in the trilogy, Lady Vengeance delves deep into the consequence of being wronged and how finding vengeance reaps more than it sows.
Article comments
1 - Ty
No need to "Forget Tarantino," he is a big fan of Chan-wook Park. I remember when Farenheit 9/11 won the Palm D'Or Prize at Cannes, Tarantino, one of the Cannes jugdes, was vehemently trying to fight for Oldboy to get the Palm D'Or Award.
And that year, I believe Oldboy deserved it too.