Zero Sum Game

Recently, I watched Boksuneun naui geot or Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the first of the Vengeance Trilogy by director Park Chan-uk, and although it shared some characteristics to Chinjeolhan geumjassi, this film was not so clear cut. In fact, I didn't like it or at least I had a very hard time watching it and sympathizing with the main character. Maybe it's because I'm a father, but couple that with the fact that the little girl character has the same name as a very fetching violinist I used to know, and the fact that violin music plays at points during the film, it's like one big fat trigger whipping me across the face repeatedly like Yu-sun's bow did.

The film is about a deaf guy who finds himself taking care of his older sister who needs a new kidney. Interesting though that kidneys are also later symbolic in Chinjeolhan geumjassi. Ryu, played by Shin Ha-kyun slogs in a factory to pay the hospital bills. He gets laid off from the job, and ends up bringing his sister played by Kim Ji-eun to his flat for care. Ryu is determined to find a kidney for his sister, but unfortunately carries type A blood. He hooks up with a dodgy couple of guys who are willing to sell him a kidney. They throw the old bait and switch, and their mummy tells him he doesn't have enough dosh to buy a kidney but she so nice that she can find one if he gives his kidney in exchange. Naively maybe, Ryu gives up a kidney and the next thing he knows he's lying naked in a vacant tower of flats, broke.

Ryu's girlfriend, Yeong-mi played by Bae Du-na, is an anarchist and hatches a plot to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy family, more precisely from the man who laid Ryu off in the first place. A bit of surveillance and the pair easily snatch Yu-sun, played by Han Bo-bae. She's so cute! A ransom exchange is planned and the pair of kidnappers have every intention of returning the girl, but then Ryu's sister figures out what is going on, and kills herself because she is ashamed of what her brother has done.

Ryu can't believe what has happened, and takes the body to the place where he promised to bury his sister. While placing his sister under a grave of stones, a peculiar character arrives. The character is credited as being retarded, but clearly the young man simply suffers from a rather serious case of cerebral palsy. A little bit of understanding goes a long way, people. He takes a fancy to the tchochki necklace that the little girl wears. He tries to nick it, but ends up just creeping the shit out of the girl. She tries to run across a rickety bridge to Ryu, whom she considers a friend, but dives in the river. Flailing, her cries are ignored by the deaf kidnapper and she drowns. My last ounce of sympathy for Ryu just floated down the river.

The story now focuses on the story of Park Dong-jin, Yu-sun's father, who has vowed a little revenge of his own. He works with a police inspector to track down the kidnappers and eventually comes across the body of his daughter. The scene in the medical examiner's room is quite telling. Park attends the autopsy, and is being torn apart emotionally as we hear the bone saws and stuff cutting up Yu-sun. He goes back to the scene of the crime and discovers the body of Ryu's sister buried on the opposite shore. He attends her autopsy and shows no hint of repulsion as the bone saws go to work on her. Tracing the steps of the kidnappers and using a series of photographs, Park discovers Ryu's identity. He goes after Yeong-mi, who devised the kidnapping to begin with and tortures her for information. During that time, he takes out a delivery man who may have seen something he shouldn't have, and the viewer begins to see that this humble electrician isn't the bootlack he has been portrayed as so far. He continues to torture Yeong-mi, who confesses that she is truly sorry for what has happened and warns him that if she disappears, her anarchist friends will get Park. The dude's basically got nothing to lose, so he amps up the electricity and that's the end of Yeong-mi.

Meanwhile, Ryu is getting a little payback on the brothers who scammed him in the first place and their drug-addicted mummy. He doesn't come out unscathed and discovers that Yeong-mi has been murdered. He now must take vengeance on Park, and goes to his house. Ryu is promptly knocked out in his weakened state by electricity the moment he tries to open the basement door. Park takes him back to the river and explains that he understands that Ryu is a good guy, but that's why he must be killed. Park cuts the lashings, and then in a gesture of poetic justice, cuts his hamstrings so that Ryu is forced to slump into the water and drown like Yu-sun.

Park drags the body from the river and cuts it into smaller pieces so that it's easier to bury. He finds a nice quiet location down a country road and is in the middle of digging a decent pit when a group of four anarchists show up and stab the guy to death, pinning a note to his chest detailing the death sentence that Yeong-mi had written earlier in the film. So it ends up being a zero sum game. Everybody involved in the kidnapping is dead and I hate that. Somebody has to survive, even if it's the bad guy, somebody has to be left standing.

The viewer is led to sympathize from the beginning with Ryu, who does everything he can to care for his sister. But by the end of it, I was cheering for Park, Yu-sun's father. I was actually surprised at how differently I saw this film. Before, I may have sided with Ryu, but I guess I see things differently now.