Part one of Chan-wook Park's so-called "revenge trilogy," three tales unconnected other than by theme, with the cycle rounded out by Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance -- though the former was the first to be released in the U.S. This one, postponing the thread of revenge until well underway, seems initially to be weaving the story of a kidnapping gone bad. "There are good kidnappings," asserts one of the schemers, "and bad kidnappings," and the present one had every intention of being a good one, a philanthropic fund-raiser to finance a lifesaving kidney operation for the sister of the turquoise-haired, deaf-mute mastermind. It goes bad, just the same, and then goes worse, in unpredictable and irreparable ways. The Korean filmmaker, on this showing, is a precisionist, a deadpan wit, an intermittent brute, and an ambiguous moralist. He is also a slowpoke. The twisty plot, while not without its improbabilities, has fewer of them, and smaller ones, than Oldboy; and the violence, while strong, is at least a little more restrained; and there is nothing at all to equate with the Fear Factor stunt of wolfing down a live octopus. These losses, as they will be viewed by some, will appear to others as gains. And the image is cleaner, fresher, generally healthier to boot. Ha-kyun Shin, Kang-ho Song, Doona Bae. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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