A lot of people might have started to watch the Vengeance 'series' when Oldboy started to gain its high cult status it rightly holds today.
Due to the success of Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, it's easy to forget the film that kicked the trilogy off. Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, although completely different, and a good film in it's own right, is often left in the shadow of it's more successful counterparts.
It's not a perfect film, at times it feels like a four hour film has been edited in half and your watching it in parts, the poor subtitles don't help, and certainly doesn't do the script any justice.
But what this film does hold is everything we have come to expect from these sort of films, an unknown direction, confusion, clever plot twists, and random comedy thrown in. And you won't find any of this done better than in this film.
Chan-Wook has gone on to be more successful, but this (and Joint security area) is a very good film and anyone that enjoyed either of the latter two in the trilogy should certainly watch this.
Due to the success of Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, it's easy to forget the film that kicked the trilogy off. Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, although completely different, and a good film in it's own right, is often left in the shadow of it's more successful counterparts.
It's not a perfect film, at times it feels like a four hour film has been edited in half and your watching it in parts, the poor subtitles don't help, and certainly doesn't do the script any justice.
But what this film does hold is everything we have come to expect from these sort of films, an unknown direction, confusion, clever plot twists, and random comedy thrown in. And you won't find any of this done better than in this film.
Chan-Wook has gone on to be more successful, but this (and Joint security area) is a very good film and anyone that enjoyed either of the latter two in the trilogy should certainly watch this.