Vengeance runs deep

Rating: 8/10 (8 February 2007)

On his way back home after a drunken night out Dae-su Oh is on his way back home with a friend who bailed him out of jail. Then, as if things couldn't get worse, Dae-su Oh disappears... right from the street with no trace. The next thing he knows he is in an apartment style room and he is being held there like an inmate. He doesn't know who his captors are and doesn't know why anyone would put him in there. 15 years later he is freed and his wanting to figure out who imprisoned him turns into obsession when he finds out his captor's plans for him aren't over.
The concept of the film is quite simple and almost seems like a classic "what if" scenario - "what if you were held against your will for a long time and then freed." What would you do? How would you feel? The strength of the movie is that it also present the other side of that scenario - why would anyone do that to anyone else? How would they arrange it? The story of vengeance that unfolds ends up being as deep as the psychology behind it and that makes for a really fascinating tale. Then there is the cinematography which is just as effective with the hallway fight scene probably being the most famous example. But almost every scene or at least every key scene manages to stand out in its own way. The acting is also strong and even inventive, especially in the end scenes. It is not necessarily realistic, but the point is this is a story so it works to get its point across. Some have compared it to Greek Tragedian acting as it attempts to encompass the summation of a long story (Greek tragedies had far reaching back-stories referred to throughout, while here it is shown in the beginning) into one moment. And as mentioned before, the film shows these scenes from opposing points of view so the viewer is left neither in failure's shambles or victory's joys, but rather outside looking in on what happened.
That makes for a revenge film that is not about revenge itself, but examines the nature of the act. --- 8/10
Rated R for brutal violence. The US dubbed version also contains profanity that seems to come standard with the thriller genre.