DIRECTED BY Chanwook Park
STARRING Min-sik Choi, Ji-tae Yoo, Hye-jung Gang
Opens October 15, Cert 18, 119 mins
the second instalment in director Chanwook Park’s so-called “Revenge Trilogy” (begun with 2002’s Sympathy For Mr Vengeance) would put even Tarantino to shame. Here Park loosely adapts a Japanese Manga about a family man imprisoned, transformed into a killing machine and eventually returned to civilian life to wreak havoc on his former captors.
In this case, the family man is Dae-su, introduced as an irascible drunk (and bravely played by the craggy, Bronson-esque Min-sik Choi) but soon kidnapped, placed in a cell that’s mocked up as a garish motel room and fed on a 15-year diet of bad TV, Valium gas, remorse and recrimination. He then finds himself back on the streets, dressed in sharp black Armani, with a mobile phone, a wad of banknotes and a near psychotic desire for revenge. Which is when the real fun begins.
Along the way, Park?like Tarantino, a natural cinematic stylist? ticks all the boxes. There’s Hitchcockian paranoia and voyeurism as Dae-su and his beautiful young sidekick Mido (Hye-jung Gang) piece together the movie’s central conspiracy; there’s Fincher-esque psychosis implicit in Dae-su’s slightly unhinged nature, as well as explicit reference to Fight Club in the high-rise d