Dante’s weekend double: “Wrath Of August” comes to the East Coast with “Oldboy” and “Lady Vengeance”
In this episode of The Weekend Double, we pay tribute to director (and master of vengeance) Park Chan-wook with two South Korean bangers so great, they almost single-handedly make up for the curse of K-pop music, but that’s another vengeance for another day.
These are the 2and and 3rd Films of his unofficial “Vengeance Trilogy” and the best of the three. With all due respect and even a little Sympathy for Mr. Vengeancethere is only room for two films.
We begin with a critically acclaimed classic from 2003, loosely based on the manga of the same name by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi, and starring veteran actor Choi Min-sik (Lady Vengeance, I Saw the Devil, Lucy), as the ill-fated businessman Oh Dae-su.
The year is 1988, and Dae-su is arrested for public drunkenness (which causes him to miss his daughter’s fourth birthday). When his friend bails him out of jail, he is kidnapped on an empty street in the middle of the night.
He wakes up in a run-down motel room that is completely sealed off. There is no one else with him, and his food is slid to him through a slot in the steel door. Every now and then a little tune plays, the room fills with gas, and when he regains consciousness, the room is clean, his clothes have been changed, and he has had a haircut.
Dae-su never finds out who locked him up or why. He just watches TV until television becomes his whole life. He punches the wall until his fists get bloody and then hard. He screams. From the TV he learns that his wife was murdered and that his blood and fingerprints were found at the crime scene. That their daughter was adopted in Sweden and that he would be a wanted man if he escaped.
This goes on for 15 years until one day he is mysteriously released. Then the hunt for answers begins.
This is a brutal tale of vengeance, fear and poetic justice, with an amazing one-shot fight scene that sees Dae-su and his former prison guards tangled in a corridor. It’s a mystery that turns into a Greek tragedy at the end with a twist that’s more than a little unsettling. Spike Lee remade the film in 2013 and even cast Josh Brolin as the lead, but that’s not something you should watch.
Old boy is being held captive on Netflix.
The trilogy ends with this stylish 2005 thriller/black comedy about the angel-faced Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae) and her crazy song of revenge.
At the tender age of nineteen, the single mother was blackmailed into confessing to the kidnapping and murder of a young boy. Her age and beauty made Geum-ja a celebrity in the tabloid press before she was sent to prison, but she is released after only thirteen years. While she didn’t get off lightly, it’s still better than life without parole. She became a model prisoner during this time, winning over her fellow inmates with her kindness.
However, the angel mask falls off the moment she is released from prison, and Geum-ja’s true face reveals her witchy self. She breaks into the orphanage to get information about her daughter (who only speaks English) and convinces her to return to South Korea.
Then she asks for favors from her paroled prison mates, who she has been sweet-talking for years, and then her evil plans against the man who took her life (our old friend Choi Min-Sik) begin to unfold – which include building a homemade gun.
The plot isn’t exactly straightforward, with constant flashbacks, and a little over the top, but that’s what makes the film so charming. It’s well written and acted, and the cinematography is expert. Young-ae is great as both the wounded soul who begs for forgiveness from the child left behind, and the dark spirit bent on revenge. The film is quirky, disturbing, and morbidly amusing.
lady Revenge is available to stream on the always reliable TUBI.
NEXT: Dante’s Double Weekend – Week three of “Wrath Of August” brings two retrospectives, “Point Blank” and “Foxy Brown”
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