People are voting emotionally.

Memorable, crazy movie

Great Film overall

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I am a fan of thriller movies, especially the South Korean ones. Of the various movies, this is the worst of the lot. There is no thriller in the first place and the movie is plain and simple. A guy kidnaps a child for money with assistance from his girlfriend. He does for a good cause and everything goes according to plan, but a sudden twist flips everything upside down with the child accidentally kills herself. The father of the victim hunts for the kidnapper, and the pursuit was boring to say the least. There are many thriller/crime movies, but this movie is nothing but a Quentin Tarantino drama. I don't recommend this movie to anyone for a gripping thriller movie.

If you his saw this movie because of Oldboy like me u might feel this is a mild prequel but the truth is both the movies quiet different .Revenge and unimaginable situations that make the world look so delicate are common. The camera is kept still and panned out most of the time .The background music is used in very selected places .Sets and locations are detailed and picturesque. The plot is as dark as it gets but it feels very possible.It is very slow but in a sharp way lets the story sink in .Unlike most slow drama movies it is not ambiguous, Suspense is also well maintained .There is an unpredictability not because the characters are so but because the situations are such that u wont be able to judge what anyone would do there.I felt so satisfied by this movie .It increased my respect for korean movies .2 Hours of suspense and bewilderment ,very clear and intense.

For anyone reading this review and considering watching this movie, please immediately switch your attention to, "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance", which is twice the movie Mr. Vengeance is. My reasoning? I am not a native Korean and I found it difficult to follow the time-line and individual characters watching with English subtitles. The same issue arose with Lady Vengeance but the simple ploy of Lady Vengeance wearing distinctive red eye-shadow meant she was always easily identifiable. I do not wish to sound in any way racist but when every Korean person in these movies is virtually identical - ladies with homogeneous height, body shape, hair colour and make-up, men with the same dark side-shade and suits (although one character in Mr. Vengeance has green hair) - it is very difficult for non-Asians to follow just exactly who everybody is and their importance to the plot when using English subtitles.Both Mr. and Lady are dark movies which depict the less-well-off areas and people of South Korea. Both movies show grim realities that are a reflection of SK culture and religious beliefs - to me it is a cross between old-school American evangelicalism and old-school Japanese cultural rigidity (apologies to Koreans for liking them to Japanese and vice-versa). There are scenes in both movies but particularly Mr. Vengeance that I cannot envisage being shown in western movie theatres (two "niche" sex-scenes and very believable torture). Overall I found Lady Vengeance more coherent, less depraved and Lady Vengeance infused me with sympathies that quite honestly did not manifest in Mr. Vengeance - so Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a complete failure in that my true sympathies lay with the characters upon whom vengeance was visited, not the "righteously indignant" party. Mr. Vengeance - 6/10 Lady Vengeance - 8.5/10

(this is part 3 of this review - look for part 1 and 2 first)As Park Chan-Wook has explained himself, his trilogy of vengeance is about guilt, or the ways of a guilty conscience. In this first of the three films, he points at guilt by taking it away, by making it absent. Ryu might be taken responsible for kidnapping Yu-sun but her death is a mere accident; even the person causing her to wake up and fall into the water might not be taken responsible, for his severe handicap. And how would we adhere Dong-jin guilt, as he is drawn into this cycle of violence by Ryu? He never asked for this. It just happened to him.(I'm almost done..)Over 'here' (the west), Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance got released after the latter OldBoy and most of it's supposed flaws have been defined as what of Oldboy it is not: less 'signature'- violence, less kinetic cinematography, less story drive, less speed. Also, people complain about the nihilist style, the story-progress where the real events seem to start only halfway the film, and the un-identifiability of it's characters. They are all right, and therefor wrong.OldBoy indeed is what Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is not: there is the good guy/bad guy set-up (with some twists and nuances of shared guilt), the identifiable character (allthough unsympathetic at first, still the victim of the story and therefor our (anti-)hero), flashy scenes of violence, some wickedly imaginative and therefor enjoyable forms of violence, some more sex, a classic three act story structure, nice build-ups of suspense, twists, secrets and revelations, and a climactic ending with big confessions and a one-to-one ultimate fight on a great location. Hurray.Instead, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance has a rhythm and imagery of surgical precision; it's violence is minimalistic, but absolute, and therefor horrific (mistakenly taken as sensational), and not enjoyable. It's story is constructed beyond genius, as I have been trying to prove. It strives to tell more than it's storyline. It's not giving us answers or closed endings. It is not a comfortable film and it's not it's aim to be enjoyable. It's fantastic and compelling nonetheless. Sympathy for Mr Vengeance is a true artistic masterpiece, to be watched over and over again, because it makes you think. It makes you realize. OldBoy is a very, very good night out.