I am a fan of thriller movies, especially the South Korean ones. Of the various movies, this is the worst of the lot. There is no thriller in the first place and the movie is plain and simple. A guy kidnaps a child for money with assistance from his girlfriend. He does for a good cause and everything goes according to plan, but a sudden twist flips everything upside down with the child accidentally kills herself. The father of the victim hunts for the kidnapper, and the pursuit was boring to say the least. There are many thriller/crime movies, but this movie is nothing but a Quentin Tarantino drama. I don't recommend this movie to anyone for a gripping thriller movie.

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.

I'm afraid that very few of my hip and flowery fellow reviewers would fall in line and agree with my assessment of 'Sympathy For Mr Vengeance', but I just don't feel right about this film...Yeah, Park is so courageous to bring such brutal frankness in such beautiful and inspirational film work, with such talented directorial technique, that he just must be a genius.But this is my review and assessment, and if my art-house loving colleagues don't agree, then I certainly support their right to disagree with me along with their right to view this kind of work the way they want.This is a film about average-Joe working-class Korean citizens running around carving each other up and spilling enough blood to make 'Goodfellas' look like a nursery rhyme. Even a supposedly legitimate government employee (I won't name the character) decided it was just a grand idea that a father grieving over the loss of his child should watch while the child was carved open and the internal organs removed.It would still be awful, but perhaps more expected if this type of horrific slaughter was committed by the Geondal, Jopok or any number of other notorious South Korean Mafioso; but if Park is expecting us to believe that these characters truly represent what the average Korean citizen is like under pressure or when faced with tragedy, then what if anything distinguishes South Korea from the culture we are told represents North Korea? I'm assuming that this director feels that life in SK isn't so different than what he is showing to the world, that these events couldn't possibly happen there... and among the common working people at that! Even though this is film, art or whatever other rosy name you want to refer to it as, I think it is meant to reflect a slice of life that is possible in any major SK city... and it begs the question; why are we still involving ourselves, at great cost in lives and dollars, in the politics and strife of cultures we don't truly understand?

If you his saw this movie because of Oldboy like me u might feel this is a mild prequel but the truth is both the movies quiet different .Revenge and unimaginable situations that make the world look so delicate are common. The camera is kept still and panned out most of the time .The background music is used in very selected places .Sets and locations are detailed and picturesque. The plot is as dark as it gets but it feels very possible.It is very slow but in a sharp way lets the story sink in .Unlike most slow drama movies it is not ambiguous, Suspense is also well maintained .There is an unpredictability not because the characters are so but because the situations are such that u wont be able to judge what anyone would do there.I felt so satisfied by this movie .It increased my respect for korean movies .2 Hours of suspense and bewilderment ,very clear and intense.