Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
All actors and roles (10)
Short description
Ryu is a deaf factory worker struggling to care for his sister, who urgently needs a kidney transplant. When he loses his job and a deal with organ traffickers leaves him cheated out of the money set aside for her surgery, his girlfriend Yeong-mi proposes kidnapping the young daughter of his former employer, a divorced man named Dong-jin, and using the ransom to pay for the operation. The plan collapses almost immediately, and a chain of terrible mistakes turns a desperate bid to save one life into an escalating cycle of violence and revenge.
The film was directed by Park Chan-wook, who wrote the screenplay with Lee Mu-yeong and Lee Jae-sun. Released in 2002, it followed his 2000 film Joint Security Area within a filmography that continued with Oldboy in 2003, Three... Extremes in 2004 and Lady Vengeance in 2005. Song Kang-ho plays Dong-jin, Shin Ha-kyun plays Ryu, Bae Doona plays Yeong-mi, Im Ji-eun plays Ryu's sister, Han Bo-bae plays the daughter Yu-Sun, and Lee Dae-yeon appears as Detective Choi, among a credited cast of 27.
The production had a budget of 4 million USD and a worldwide box office of 2 million USD. It holds a rating of 7.5 out of 10 on IMDb from 73,721 votes, and a matching 7.5 out of 10 on TMDB from 1,784 votes, while the film critics' rating stands at 6.2 out of 10 from 58 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- The original title of the film can be translated as "I Will Avenge," or "My Revenge".
- Initially, Park Chan-wook wanted the colors in the film to gradually fade, turning it into a black and white film by the final scene.
- Following the success of 'Joint Security Area,' Park Chan-wook was given carte blanche to film anything he wanted, and he decided to make a film about revenge, a theme he considered the most interesting. He searched for a script for a long time, then decided to return to an old idea and wrote the script himself.
- The film's script was written in 20 hours of continuous work.
- All the characters who communicate using sign language in the film learned it from real deaf-mute people.
- The first film in history to feature an erotic scene involving characters communicating in sign language.
- Ryu Seung-bom, who played the cripple by the river, specifically observed people with cerebral palsy to more accurately convey their movements.
- Shin Ha-gyun mentioned in one interview that for some reason, the filmmakers were unable to use special effects when filming the scene of Ryu's murder, so the beating was real. Filming for the poster, scheduled for the next day, had to be postponed to a later date as the actor's face was swollen from the beating.
- In the first scene of the autopsy, Song Kang-ho is actually looking at an empty table. The body was later added using computer technology.
- Song Kang-ho screamed for three days to strain his voice before filming the scene where he calls for help from under a plastic bag placed over his head.
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