Absurdity of hate and revenge.

Rating: 8/10 (22 October 2004)

The plot outline provided by IMDb is quite inaccurate.
The protagonist disappears without a trace one rainy night after a boozy night.
He is not jailed and paroled. He is kidnapped, drugged regularly and kept imprisioned for 15 years without ever getting an explanation until he manages to escape (or so he believes).
Once outside he plots revenge against his captors, but without suspecting why he runs into a cute, young girl he has seen on TV (that became his only contact with the outside world) which will eventually play the biggest part on the protagonist's fate in unsuspected, chilling ways.
The movie is quite a wild ride and will be infamous for its moment of gastronomic audacity and madness.
Although the plot thickens quite a bit in towards the end and some of the propositions are a bit stretched, some questions posed by the movie are quite interesting: would you be happy living without knowing terrible truths? Is love without reserve always a good thing?
The movie has some quite realistic (for East Asian cinema tastes) fight scenes in which the hero beats gangs of young assailants, in contrast with Chinese action movies or even some Hollywood action movies, the protagonist is badly beaten, dragged and humiliated until the point of self destruction.
But at the end he prevails. Kind of...