Chinjeolhan geumjassi
(2005)After serving a 13 year sentence for the kidnapping and murder of a young boy, Geum-ja Lee gains her release from prison, and begins to live her life once more.
But her life is not all she is living. Or at least not all she is living -for-. See, Geum-ja has a plan; she wants to strike back at the murdering psycho who actually committed the crime she went to prison for and in so doing find the one thing she lost that she actually cares for.
Lady Vengeance (or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance) is both violent and poetic, if that is possible to picture in your mind. I have only seen one other Park film, Oldboy but these two are enough to show me what an excellent director and storyteller he is.
Combining humor and sentiment with revenge and violence is a tough row to hoe, but as Lady Vengeance demonstrates, when it is done right, it is done well. Even though the film did not seem as vicious or violent as Oldboy, it did still come to a pretty intense conclusion.
Yeong-ae Lee as Geum-ja is wonderful as the troubled ex-convict who is seeking both redemption and revenge but by the time it all comes to a close she is seeking even more, almost without knowing she is reaching for it.
As it was with Oldboy, the movie itself is beautiful. The use of color, the way the scenes flowed from one point to another almost seamlessly, how they tried to use the camera to tell the story in some places, all of it was just amazing.
This film is one of the better examples of this genre and I am looking forward to seeing the first film someday. This should be on everyone's list who likes action oriented film.
