In this addition to The Weekend Double, we’re giving a salute to director (and vengeance master) Park Chan-wook with two South Korean bangers that are so awesome they almost single-handedly make up for the curse of K-Pop music, but that’s another vendetta for another day.
These are the 2nd and 3rd films in his unofficial “Vengeance Trilogy” and the best ones of the three. With all due respect and even a little Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, there’s only room for two movies.
We begin with a critically acclaimed classic from 2003 that’s loosely based on the manga of the same name by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi, and it stars veteran actor, Choi Min-sik (Lady Vengeance, I Saw The Devil, Lucy), as the ill-fated businessman, Oh Dae-su.
The year is 1988, and Dae-su is arrested for public intoxication (causing him to miss his daughter’s fourth birthday). When his friend bails him out of jail, he’s abducted off an empty street in the middle of the night.
He wakes up in a seedy-looking motel room that is completely sealed. There is nobody else in there with him, and his meals are pushed to him through a slot in the steel door. Occasionally a little tune plays, the room fills with gas, and when he regains consciousness, the room has been cleaned, his clothes have been changed, and he has received a haircut.
Dae-su is never told who has imprisoned him, or why. He just watches television until it becomes his entire life. He pounds the wall until his fists grow bloody, and then hardened. He screams. He learns from the television that his wife was murdered, and that his blood and fingerprints were found at the scene. That their daughter has been adopted in Sweden, and if he were to escape, he’d be a wanted man.
This goes on for 15 years until one day he’s mysteriously released, and that’s when the hunt for answers begins.
This is a violent tale of revenge, anguish, and poetic justice with an amazing one-take fight sequence involving Dae-su, and his former jailers in a corridor. It’s a mystery that unfolds into a Greek tragedy by the end with a twist that’s more than a little unsettling. Spike Lee remade the movie in 2013 and even got Josh Brolin to star in it, but you don’t want to watch that.
Oldboy is being held captive on Netflix.
The trilogy concludes with this stylish 2005 thriller/dark comedy about angel-faced Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae), and her demented song of retribution.
At the tender age of nineteen, the single mother was blackmailed into confessing to the kidnapping and murder of a little boy. Her age and beauty made Geum-ja a tabloid celebrity before being sent to prison, but she gets released after only serving thirteen years. Not that she got off easy, but it’s still better than life without parole. She became a model prisoner during that time and won over her fellow inmates with kindness.
However, the angelic mask would fall off the moment she’s released from prison, and Geum-ja’s true face would reveal its witchy self. She breaks into the orphanage to get information about her daughter (who only speaks English) and convinces her to come back to South Korea.
Then she calls in favors to her paroled prison buddies that she spent years buttering up, and that’s when her wicked plans start to roll against the man who took her life away (our old friend, Choi Min-Sik) – which includes building a homemade gun.
The plot isn’t exactly linear with the constant flashbacks, and it’s a little over-the-top, but that’s part of the movie’s charm. It’s well-written and acted, and the cinematography is at an expert level. Young-ae is great as both the damaged soul seeking forgiveness from the child she left behind and the dark spirit bent on revenge. It’s quirky, disturbing, and morbidly amusing.
Lady Vengeance is available to stream on the always-dependable TUBI.