Lady Vengeance
R
2006
**1/2 out of ****

I am happy to say that the third of Korean director Chan Wook Park’s “vengeance” movies was much, much better than the second. I was exceedingly skeptical that this one would be any good, but I decided to give it a chance, and was rewarded for my faith. ^_^ Still not as good as Oldboy, but as long as it was better than Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance I was going to be happy.

Premise: A woman of nineteen is imprisoned for allegedly murdering a five year old boy. Thirteen years later she’s out of jail, changed from the angelic girl she was in prison to a woman cool and set on her business - looking for vengeance on the man who set her up. She enlists the aid of her former cellmates, each of whom comment on how she has changed, setting into motion a plan thirteen years in the making. During her quest she is reuinited with her daughter, and gets a job at a bakery. ^_^

This seems to be Park’s attempt at dark comedy, and for the most part, he succeeded. The biggest problem with this movie came when it just would not end. Someone did an extremely poor editing job on this film. And there was kind of a stupid side storyline with the main character’s (Guem-Ja) daughter. that could pretty much have been completely cut out.

The movie was pretty funny, which was quite refreshing after watching Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and the core story was well told and very clear. There were a couple of scenes that left you trying to figure out what was going on, but nowhere near as badly as the second in this trilogy. The end, of course, was shockingly brutal. Looks like Park always has to get in his quota of gore and “O_O Holy crap!” scenes. But I have to say, there was something satisfying about the end. It’s always satisfying when the bad guy gets it good. Especially in this case, when the bad guy had murdered four children.

The bottom line - cut away all the extraneous crap, which would probably shorten the movie by at least forty five minutes, and you have a very decent film.