Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

PeaceGuard I know that with 7,7 current overall rating, most people will not agree with me, especially Tarantino-Rodriguez fans. But my opinion is this.The movie is highly unrealistic, half-baked, has some major flaws and blanks and rationally it more often doesn't make sense than it does. You can say how beautiful are the interlacing threads of love, hate and vengeance, but in the end it doesn't have much meaning if everything else is just one big mistake.Let's be more specific here and make some examples. The deaf boy's sister kills herself because of the "asian honor thing", as a result of knowing about the kidnapping. Well.. let's just hope other people won't act like that, because everyone would kill themselves because of some reason they find morally unacceptable. The deaf boy doesn't help the girl at all, because "he thought the water was deep". The pair does not hide after the girl's death and they even send some message and photos to the radio (which, of course, Mr. Vengeance has to accidentally hear). Everyone find everyone in this movie, just like that, like the addresses of the people they look for are written in a phone book. A pathologist performs an autopsy of a girl before the eyes of his father.. what? And later he's even present during an autopsy of a girl who's completely strange to him, is this a joke? The father (I suppose he's the "Mr. Vengeance") kills the waiter who comes to deliver the food for no reason. The police doesn't arrest that guy the moment he kills the deaf boy's girlfriend.. they seem not to know who did this at all.But the moral part of the movie is the worst. It glorifies (well.. maybe that's an overstatement, but it surely doesn't disapprove it in any way) self-appointed vengeance. It suggests that death of two people (well.. three) by torture is the right way to answer for a kidnapping and a negligent homicide. The guy exploits his workers if a factory, where they have breaks lasting 10 seconds. He does not pay them enough to make a living. He has no empathy for a worker who begs him to help and later for his whole dead family too. But he still says "he thinks he's always lived uprightly" and morally justifies what he does throughout the movie. This is just a sick, radical-Muslim-alike thinking.I've watched this movie, because I thought that this director has done other movies which would be as good as Oldboy, or at least at the level of Stoker. But in this case I was wrong. I'm not some king of drastic scenes opponent, but it seems to me like this movie has just nothing more to offer and that makes it trashy.No.. I have no sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Both as a character and as a movie. It's been one of the worst movies I've seen lately.

liVetoair2466698 This movie is best thought of as a Korean version of Fargo. It has, essentially, the same premise and outcome, but is MUCH more uncomfortable and gratuitous. Those familiar with the director will find his signature scenes that have been immaculately framed, and some spot on casting choices. It's best to watch this movie if you're not the squeamish type, as there is a lot of graphic (and implied) violence as well as one particular sex scene. The characters' motives are established very clearly, which helps to show that no one is actually a "bad person," and the lack of a proper soundtrack is a good choice, with it symbolising the main character's deafness. Yeah, if you're a fan of thrillers, violence and Korea, this movie is a good one.

CinemaClown The first chapter of the Vengeance trilogy is a very stylistically filmed and layered movie with themes of revenge, loss, betrayal & guilt very nicely captured on camera by director Chan Wook Park. The first half of the film is relatively slow, out of flow & even seems to be heading towards a disaster but it's the second half where this film starts taking itself more seriously than expected and turns out to be a major improvement, resulting in culminating with a highly satisfying conclusion. The movie is no doubt brutal & bloody but the violence is there for a purpose & you'll know what i mean when you see it yourself. Overall, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a nicely experimented revenge drama that despite of its shortcomings, remains a much better & satisfying thriller than most of its Hollywood counterparts.

Leofwine_draca Coming to Sympathy for Mr Vengeance after watching Park Chan-Wook's later, better known films like OLDBOY, I'm once again blown away by his sheer ability as a director. This is a storyline that keeps you guessing, a film that takes sheer joy in the beauty of cinema and in depicting out-of-the-ordinary scenes and situations. It's also another film that's impossible to pigeonhole; whether you try and proclaim it a black comedy, a kidnap drama or a revenge thriller, you'll never be quite there. Instead it's a cross-genre masterpiece with an extremely black heart.The film's main character is a deaf mute who finds himself in dire financial difficulty. He comes up with the idea of arranging a kidnapping to make some money, but as this is a film it all ends up going horribly wrong. The story sounds predictable when written down, but there's so much more to it than that. Of course, it's the direction that really makes the story. I'm struck here by the intricate editing, which leaves out key scenes for the better, like the second meeting with the organ traffickers. Most directors would have dwelt on that scene in all its grotesque glory, but the event feels all the more powerful here simply because it's missing and we only witness the aftermath. Truly, this is one of those films where every element has its place and nothing goes to waste.The acting is excellent, particularly from Ha-kyun Shin. It's never easy to act purely through the eyes and facial expressions alone, but Shin convinces us of his character's plight and even elicits sympathy for his situation. Doona Bae has a lot of fun in a more minor role as his girlfriend, but it's Kang-ho Song who really gets the attention as the father of the kidnap victim. Song has gone from strength to strength in the likes of THE HOST and THIRST since his role here and it's easy to see the talents that make him one of Korea's biggest names.Inevitably, this is a violent story with some very unpleasant incidents taking place, but each one has a place in the story and the violence, although extreme, never feels gratuitous. What's particularly interesting is the way the story plays out in shades of grey, refusing to judge any of its characters – which makes the last half an hour particularly hard hitting, as you're never quite sure of who to root for. Whew, I'm exhausted just from watching it; this is a great movie.