Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (18)

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is the final film in Chan-wook Park's vengeance trilogy, following on from Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. It is about Lee Geum-ja who goes to prison at the age of 19 for the abduction and murder of a young boy. She is described as an angel and appears to take to religion and prayer, seeking to do good deeds for her cell mates. Upon her release, she turns to those she helped in prison to enact revenge on the man for whom she went to prison, thereby losing her daughter in the process.

It's a grizzly tale of revenge and forgiveness, plotted intricately so that she can punish her accomplice for crimes for which she abetted but did not commit. While not quite as graphic or hard to stomach as Oldboy, this film does express the anger and frustration of the victims of crime, showcasing the feelings of the parents of a series of abducted children, and focuses on the idea of sin, punishment and redemption, with Geum-ja stating that she knows she must pay for her crimes, but she also believes that nobody involved in those crimes should escape punishment. She also looks for forgiveness and redemption in the eyes of the parents of the child her accomplice murdered, as well as in the eyes of her abandoned daughter.

On the whole this is a beautifully scripted, shot and acted film, and it is well worth the blood and gore.