Director: Chan-wook Park
Starring: Kang-ho Song, Ha-kyun Shin, Du-na Bae, Ji-Eun Lim, Bo-bae Han, Se-dong Kim, Dae-yeon Lee, Ju-bong Gi, Gyu-su Jeong, Jae-yeong Jeong, Kan-hie Lee, Kwang-rok Oh, Seung-beom Ryu
Cert: 18
Region: B
Length: 121mins
Video: AVC, 1080p, 2.35:1
Audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Languages: Korean
Subtitles: English
Number of Discs: 1

Oldboy is the Chan-wook Park film that gained the most notoriety in this country (probably because the main character ate a live octopus) but Sympathy, Park's first entry in the vengeance trilogy, (Lady Vengeance being the third) arguably remains the best. All the auteur elements we've come to love about the stylish Korean director were already fully formed in this, only his second feature: Kidnapping, characters with mental health problems, explicit violence and moments of screwball humour to beat away the darkness.

I'll fight you, but I ain't getting out of bed to do so

The film begins with deaf-mute Ryu trying to secure a kidney donor for his dying sister. Having been fired at his factory job he sells his own kidney to a gang who handle illegal organ transplants in return for another kidney; one that will match his sister's blood type. They don't hold up their end of the bargain and scarper. The next day Ryu learns a suitable donor has been found at the hospital and he has one week to pay the expenses. Since he has no money left, he and his anarchist girlfriend Cha Yeong-mi come up with a plan to extort money from rich businessman Dong-jin by kidnapping his daughter. It seems like a simple snatch and grab ("Kidnappers get a bad rap because they kill the kid, but we won't do that," Cha explains confidently. "It'll be a simple trade off") but when the little girl accidentally dies in their custody a chain reaction of vengeance begins with Dong-jin hunting his daughter's killers while Ryu looks for the organ gang who got him into this mess in the first place.

Just when you think you know what director Chan-wook Park has in mind for his characters, he throws something completely unexpected and surreal at them - the would-be kidnappers' first attempt to steal the girl is interrupted when another recently sacked employee turns up with a similar idea, or Ryu looking on as a handicapped man appears from nowhere to steal the dead girl's necklace. It's also a film where carefully planned static shots lend the story an almost storybook quality with the characters walking around inside the frame instead of being at the mercy of showy camera moves (if Wes Anderson had been born in Korea under less happy circumstances he might have directed a film like this).