Lady VengeancePark's unsettling vision  June 7,
2006 11:27:48 AM
LADY VENGEANCE: Staring even deeper into the abyss.
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Where Oldboy flaunted its operatic grandeur and technical virtuosity, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance favored an unflinching vérité approach to its Möbius strip of tragic revenge. Difficult to watch, it was also impossible to look away from. In the final installment of his “vengeance” trilogy, Park Chan-wook provokes you to stare even deeper into the abyss; some (parents with young children) might finally blink. The prison-set first half comprising a humorous succession of fractured flashbacks establishes Lee Yeong-ae as “The Kind Ms. Geum-ja,” the angelic patron saint of her prison mates. After 13 years, Geum-ja is released, and her sole purpose is to take revenge on Mr. Baek (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik), the true perpetrator of the child’s murder for which she was convicted. For the first time, choice is introduced into the resolution — a satisfying, unsettling conclusion to Park’s uncompromising vision.
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