Before the opening titles, a few nice gut-thumping adrenalin hits - and that's just for starters . . .

Rating: 8/10 (20 August 2004)

(minor spoilers inasmuch as I mention some violent highlights) Park Chan-wook continues his individual style of extreme (and extremely creative) violence that he displayed to us in Sympathy for Mr Vengeance. For instance, there is removal of teeth without anaesthetic, self-mutilation, single-handed destruction of a gang of thugs by one man using a claw-tooth hammer. Odd bit of sexual violence and nakedness just in case we thought this was a movie suitable for the kids.
The plot is reasonably inventive - a man who is incarcerated for 15 years and isn't told why. When he gets out he creates a path of mayhem trying to escape the web of his enemies. then the plot thickens. One thing that Chan-wook is good at is twisting the audience's emotional sympathies after showing how thoroughly nasty all the characters are. Suddenly we are shown things in a different light. Even the opening scene where a man is being dangled off a rooftop held by another man simply by his necktie is not what it seems. The inventive ending reveals some of the twisted underpinning that is vaguely reminiscent of Kill Bill. Unlike Tarantino however, Park Chan-wook's violence isn't stylised - it's stomach-churningly realistic. Add lots of nice artistic touches on the camera work, get your audience to accept (in true Oriental film-making style) that not all the logical developments need necessarily be explained, and you have another masterly thriller that stands head and shoulders above mainstream Oriental thrillers.