Sympathy+for+Mr.Vengeance




 * Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance**

Ryu is an innate deaf who lives with his only family member, sister. His sister suffers from global heart failure, and needs to receive a kidney transplant surgery. In order to find right kidney for her sister, Ryu gives all money he has earned for his lifetime and his own kidney to gangs that trade organs. However, Ryu is defrauded of both money and his kidney by the gangs, and looks for another way to prepare money for his sister's surgery. He kidnaps a child of Dongjin, the boss of his factory, and receives money from Dongjin. However, his sister knows about Ryu's abduction, and commits suicide. To make things worse, while Ryu concentrates on burying his sister, the child drowns. Ryu begins taking revenge on the gangs, and Dongjin begins taking revenge on Ryu.

The theme of this film is that vengeance is futile after all because vengeance does not neither remove one's sorrow, nor changes irreversible situations.

The director gives a strong message that vengeance is not the right way to express one's loathing, and to release him/her from terrible memories throughout the vengeance trilogy. In the movies, the main characters' vengeance involves demises or agony of innocent people related to them, and does not turn out a successful achievement. The main characters are not happy even though they partially succeed superficial aspect of their vengeance, murder of people who they have felt hatred and retaliatory spirit towards, because they cannot still dispel their mental agony completely. In this movie, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, while Ryu brutally revenges the gangs, he loses his girlfriend and eventually gets killed by Dongjin on his way to take another revenge on Dongjin who killed Ryu's girlfriend. This shows Ryu's ultimate failure in vengeance because he does not receive any relief or satisfaction as a compensation for his vengeance, and faces the same miserable end instead. In addition, when Dongjin cuts Ryu's Achilles tendon in the river, he says, "I know you are a good guy. So you must understand me even though I kill you, right?" Although Dongju knows that Ryu did not intentionally kill his daughter and it was just an unfortunate accident, he kills Ryu anyway to do anything for his deep sorrow and enmity to lose his daughter. However, it is implied that Dongjin will not extricate himself from such emotions and feel much relieved because he knows his vengeance actually fails as Ryu is not the one who deserves the revenge. These reconcile with the content of the director's another movie, Oldboy, in that O-dae-su fails to take revenge on Woojin who had put him in prison for 15 years, and Woojin asks himself "what should I live for from now on?" after he successively takes revenge on O-dae-su. Furthermore, when Dongjin gets out of the water after he cuts Ryu's achilles tendon, anarchists where Ryu's girlfriend belonged to come to him and stab his stomach. This ending scene again emphasizes one of the themes that one can never succeed and own perfect vengeance due to involvement of innocent people's deaths in the process of their vengeance, and possibility of bringing another vengeance of the innocent people done by other people.



__ 1. Identify the first image (or scene) in the film and describe how it provides insight into the theme of the film. __ In the first scene in the film, Ryu and his sister together listen to the radio that the narrator reads Ryu's letter to his sister. The first scene does not really provide insight into the theme of the film because the theme of the movie is all about vengeance, but the first scene only shows only sincere relationship between Ryu and his sick sister.

__ 2. What is the inciting incident? __ Ryu's sister needs to immediately receive surgery for heart failure. She needs to be transplanted kidneys of the others.

__ 3. What are the major plot points of the first act? __ -Ryu works in a steel factory where Dongju is the boss. -Ryu cannot transplant his own kidney to her sister because their blood types do not match. -Ryu sees an advertisement sticker on the bathroom wall that the organ-dealing gangs buy organs and pay money for them.

__ 3. At what point is the balance upset? __ The balance is upset when the hospital miraculously acquires the right kidney for Ryu's sister, but Ryu is already defrauded of all his money by the gangs.

__ 4. What is the Set up For Act 2? __ Ryu is convinced by his girlfriend that they should do the "good abduction." Unlike bad abduction that criminals kidnap children and kill them even though they receive money from the children's parents, good abduction safely takes child for a moment, and returns him/her immediately after they receive money from his/her parents.

__ 5. What threshold guardians appear in the first part of act 2? __ Ryu's sister realizes and becomes shocked by the fact that innocent Ryu inevitably abducts a child and blackmails the child's father to prepare money for her surgery.

__ 6. What other conflicts raise the stakes? __ Ryu's sister commits suicide and Ryu cries after he sees his sister's dead body in the bathroom.

__ 7. What is the reversal of fortune that occurs about halfway through the film? __ Dongjin's daughter accidentally drowns in the river while Ryu buries her sister's corpse in riverside. Since Ryu is a deaf, he cannot hear Dongjin's daughter calling for rescue.

__ 8. What conflicts / threshold guardians define the second half of act 2? __ While Ryu begins taking revenge on the gangs, Dongjin knows his daughter's death and decides to take his revenge on Ryu.

__ 9. What event starts act three and propels the protagonist to face their greatest challenge? __ 9-1) After Ryu finishes the revenge to the gangs, he finds that Dongjin killed Ryu's girlfriend. Ryu decides to take another revenge on Dongjin and goes to Dongjin's house. 9-2) However, Ryu is caught in a trap and faints from fright. Dongjin takes tied Ryu into the river where his daughter accidentally died, and cuts Ryu's achilles tendon in the water.

__ 10. What is the rising action of act 3? __ Ryu dies dyeing the green river with his blood, and Dongjin gets out of the water.

__ 11. How does the climax of the film define the choice that the character must make between what they want and what they need? __ Dongjin meets and becomes stabbed by the strangers after he gets out of the water. Since another person's revenge on Dongjin has never been expected throughout the movie while the movie has only focused on Ryu's revenge on Dongjin and Dongjin's on Ryu, when Dongjin is unexpectedly stabbed by the strangers is the climax of the film. This climax defines the choice the anarchists must make between what they want and what they need: they do what they want, the vengeance for the death of Ryu's girlfriend, by killing Dongjin instead of realization of futility and continuity of vengeance.

__ 12. What is the falling action of act 3, and how has the world changed and found a new balance? __ Dongjin realizes that the strangers are the anarchists who Ryu's girlfriend used to work with, and that they come to do revenge of Ryu's girlfriend. Both Ryu and Dongjin who decided and planned revenge on each other fail to accomplish perfect revenge as both of them are brutally murdered by the others who take revenge on them at the end. The world has changed to where Ryu and Dongjin's vengeance was forcefully ended due to their demises, and to where the vengeance of Ryu's girlfriend superficially succeeded as Dongjin's death may possibly bring another vengeance on the coworkers of Ryu's girlfriend in the future.

__ 13. What is the denouement? __ After the anarchists leave, Dongjin dies with a knife stabbed on his stomach. He wants to read the sentencing under the knife, but he cannot.