Akira Kurosawa's fascinating "High and Low" (1963) involves a kidnapping that goes awry for a surprising reason that forces everyone -- the family, the police, the kidnappers -- to reconsider what's going on.
The cunning twist triggers an odd ripple in the way different social classes are affected by the crime.
Park Chanwook's "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" also dramatizes a kidnapping that goes awry, but with horrific consequences that multiply like a virus. Everything about it is strange, including a seismic shift in tone.
The 2002 South Korean film, which picked up a North American distributor belatedly, is the first part of a trilogy that includes "Oldboy" and "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance."
"Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" unfolds in three movements, like a three-act play.
The first is full of pathos.
"I'm a good person. I'm a hard worker," says Ryu (Shin Ha Kyun) in the opening narration, which is confusingly delivered by a female voice.
Ryu is a green-haired deaf mute who is devoted to his only living relative, a self-sacrificing older sister (Lim Ji Eun) who has had to leave her factory job because she needs a kidney transplant.
Discharged from his own job by factory owner Park Dong Jin (Song Kang Ho), Ryo volunteers his own kidney, but he's the wrong blood type. He sells his kidney to an organ black marketeer, but he's left to die, naked and with no money.
At wit's end, he takes the advice of his lame-brained girl friend, a leftist anarchist named Yeong Mi Cha (Bae Doona), who tells him to kidnap Park's daughter, who may be persuaded she's on vacation at one of her dad's friend's.
The kidnapping, like some other key moments, occurs off camera. The child buys into the vacation ruse, but she wonders aloud how her rich dad happens to have such poor friends.
The execution of the ill-conceived plan is so pathetic it belongs in one of those comically inept crimes lists.
But one tragedy after another ensues. At every juncture, the screenplay selects with the worst consequences of each action.
Park's fatalistic film examines a planet that jumps off its axis as bad judgments escalate.
There's plenty amiss in "Sympathy."
It's too long at more than two hours, too deliberately paced and too unevenly structured. It contains narrative deficiencies, a wholly gratuitous gross-out sex scene, grueling and graphic tortures and murders.
It relies too much on coincidence, from clues that come out of nowhere to the fact the investigating cop, Choe (Lee Dae Yeon), has a seriously ill child. Park might get by with some of his intersecting details, but the film gets weighed down by them.
It sets out to be about fundamentally good people who get tripped up by poor judgment, but it too eagerly exploits the grotesque instincts that lie beneath. Most of this cannot be excused as dark humor. The film becomes relentless -- vicious beyond redemption and catharsis.
The story, a good one to be sure, could be redone by a filmmaker with greater compassion and taste. But I fear the same excesses would be embraced. Additional Information:
Details
'Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance'Director: Park Chanwook.
Stars: Shin Ha Kyun, Song Kang Ho.
MPAA rating: R for strong, gruesome violence, strong sexuality, language and drug use.
Opens Friday: Squirrel Hill Theater.
