Mubi Monday: Lady Vengeance (2005)

The last instalment of Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy, Lady Vengeance is a deceptively light tale that leads to a finale that allows viewers to question what vengeance really brings, be it closure, catharsis, guilt, dissatisfaction, or any other number of feelings.

Lee Young-ae plays Lee Geum-ja, a young woman who is released from prison at the start of the film. She has served a 13-year sentence for the kidnap and murder of a small boy, and throughout that time she has been coming up with a grand plan and building up a store of favours. Because, as becomes clear quite early on, she wasn't the person responsible for the horrific crime. Despite confessing to it.

The first script collaboration between Chan-wook and Jeong Seo-kyeong, Lady Vengeance is a well-constructed piece of work that skirts close to being a mystery before showing you all of the cards quite early on. You have questions during the opening act, those are answered during the middle section, and the third act sets everything out, as our lead does for other characters, and shows a stark choice to be made, one that will reverberate through the lives of others for many years to come.

Although there are many interesting supporting characters here, with one of the most memorable being a spiteful and abusive prisoner named "The Witch" (played by Go Soo-hee), Lady Vengeance never loses focus of the main characters. You have Lee Geum-ja, Detective Choi (Nam Il-woo), who was never convinced of her guilt, and Mr. Baek (Choi Min-sik, returning for a smaller, but no less vital, role after his peerless turn in Oldboy).

What Chan-wook and Seo-kyeong do so well is the detailing and forward momentum of the script. Even as you perhaps have to play a bit of catch up, reminding yourself of who various characters are between the present and the past, there's a narration to help, as well as various signifiers telling you what plot point any particular sequence is revolving around. Whether it's a dream sequence, a memory, or simply a scene showing you something happening that seems out of the blue, there's always enough within the frame to stop viewers getting totally lost.

Young-ae is a great protagonist, she is a perfect mix of sweet, innocent, scheming, and absolute ruthlessness. Il-woo is a nice addition to the core group, showing how frustrating it must be to go along with a majority verdict while you have no concrete evidence to back up your own feeling on the matter. And then you have Min-sik, being horrible, and doing so well at it. Kim Si-hoo also deserves a mention, playing Geun-shik, a young man who would have been about the same age as the murdered child, and a co-worker that is drawn into a relationship with our lead.

The previous two instalments showed how vengeance affects individuals, in a way, while this shows how it can bond together a group of people, for better or worse. It remains a lighter look at things, compared to the other movies, but that's down to the deceptive direction from Chan-wook, who uses every trick in the book to keep you entertained and enthralled throughout, with the exception of one or two moments that stop things and turn your face to look directly at the consequences of what is being done. And that is the brilliance of this final instalment of what is an unmissable cinematic trilogy.

8/10

This is a set you may want to pick up.

Mubi Monday: Oldboy (2003)

The second (and many would rate it as the best) instalment of  Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy, Oldboy is a film I deliberately haven't revisited in many years. I was always waiting for the right time, and I always wanted to watch it as part of the trilogy, compared to my first viewing, when I was blown away by the film, then saw Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance some time later, and eventually saw Lady Vengeance when that was released later.

Choi Min-sik plays Oh Dae-su, a man who is snatched off the street and imprisoned in a room for fifteen years. He doesn't know who his captor is, nor does he know why he was chosen for the punishment. When he is released, again without any explanation, he sets out to find out who was responsible for taking such a large chunk of his life from him. On the plus side, he meets and falls in love with a young woman named Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung). On the downside, he sets off on a path of revenge that may not lead to the resolution he wants. It may, in fact, lead to a realisation that his time alone in that room was only part of his punishment.

Oldboy is a film with a few amazing set-pieces helping to make it unforgettable. If you've not seen the film already then you've still probably heard about moments from it, be it the eating of a live octopus, the dental trauma, the astonishing corridor fight between a number of men and a hammer-wielding Min-sik, or even the details of the ending (I would never discuss such things, but you may have read or heard something spoilerific by now, especially if you're a fan of Asian cinema). Thankfully, the film doesn't JUST rely on those moments. Based on a manga of the same name, and adapted into film form by Chan-wook, Hwang Jo-yun, and Lim Jun-hyung, the entire movie is a carefully constructed puzzle, full of tense moments as you become more and more invested in the central characters and hope to see no further harm befalling them.

Min-sik is an absolute tour-de-force in the lead role, starting as a useless drunkard detained by police, becoming the traumatised prisoner, and then turning into the survivor consumed by a need for explanation and revenge. Hye-jung is very good in a role that could have easily felt too fake and contrived, and the goodness she emanates is something that reverberates through the finale, lending more impact to every plot development that feels like a very hard slap in the face. Yoo Ji-tae is suitably conniving and confident as the main figure taking his amusement in working the main character like a puppet. That's not a spoiler. The reveal of who is ultimately responsible for such prolonged imprisonment and torture is not really a big deal once it becomes clear that the main question to ask is why? The other main actors worth mentioning are Kim Byeong-ok, playing a bodyguard to Ji-tae's character, and Oh Dal-su as an employee who oversaw the day to day running of the prison.

But it's hard to deny that this is Chan-wook's film all the way. He may have gathered up some great players, drawing what may well remain a career-best turn from Min-sik, but his attention to detail, his audacity in the execution of the material, and the choices made while leading viewers to what I consider to be one of the best third act reveals of all time, while also leaving enough ambiguity for everyone to provide their own interpretations, all come together to make this his masterpiece (and that is despite stiff competition from the likes of Thirst and The Handmaiden).

If you can only ever see one Park Chan-wook film then make it this trilogy. Because you cannot JUST see one Park Chan-wook film. You should see them all. This is his best film, but it's all the better because of it also being the central point between two other damn fine movies.

10/10

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Lucy (2014)

Luc Besson wrote and directed a movie back in 2005 called Angel-A. It was pretty damn great. As slick and visually stylish as his other work, with a kickass female character, and one or two interesting ideas embedded in the tale. Nobody watched it, as far as I can tell. Which made it completely unsurprising when Besson went back to his more comfortable stomping ground, producing a number of generic, yet also enjoyable, action movies that fit comfortably in the dumb fun section of any movie collection.

Fast forward almost a decade, ironically enough (considering certain plot elements of this film), and it seems that Besson has tried something different once again. Something that, this time, has managed to find an audience. Whether or not that audience will be there after a strong opening remains to be seen. Lucy has been marketed to many as a sci-fi action flick when it attempts to be something more interesting and thought-provoking than that. Sadly, it's also pretty bad. In fact, there are many times when it's just downright laughable.

Scarlett Johansson is the titular character, a woman who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She ends up being put to sleep, and wakes up to discover that she's had a bag of drugs placed inside her body - making her a perfect mule. But when this bag is ruptured, the drugs enter Lucy's system and start to change her. Instead of only using 10% of her brain (yes, yes, it's that old chestnut), she starts to use more and more, becoming more aware and powerful with each stage of ultrafast evolution. Knowing what this is all leading up to, she tries to track down Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman), and also the other drug mules, all now carrying a drug that she may well need to survive. A cop (Amr Waked) tries to apprehend her, but soon realises that he doesn't stand much chance, so ends up helping her instead.

Mining similar ground to Limitless, but going off on a very different tangent, Lucy stumbles from the very beginning, then starts to fall down completely, in between fleeting moments of great entertainment. People have been getting angrier lately at the regurgitation of the whole "we only use 10-20% of our brain" myth, but it's not something I've ever been bothered by, as a plot device. Admittedly, I used to think it was true, but even nowadays I think it's a fun idea, as long as you buy into it in the name of fun fun fun. But Lucy isn't content to provide you with fun. It wants to have depth, it wants to make you think. And that's when it falls down.

Don't get me wrong. Dumb fun can be great. Smart entertainment can be great. Smart dumb hits me right in the funny bone. But when a movie really seems to think it's smart, despite throwing dumb moment after dumb moment at the audience, then it becomes difficult to like. Besson shows his hand early - clumsily editing a sequence in which Lucy is asked to meet some men with wildlife footage showing a predator chase down some prey (because she's put in the position of the prey - get it? GET IT??) - and continues to use the same tricks again and again, as he shows the evolution of Lucy once the drugs begin to work on her.

The frustrating thing here is that Lucy IS a potentially great character, with Johansson effortlessly exuding cool confidence once she's really able to kick ass and manipulate her environment. Freeman may be Mr. Exposition, but does perfectly well in his role, and Waked moves through the whole thing with an amusing expression of fear and awe. Choi Min-Sik is the main villain, the man responsible for the state in which Lucy finds herself, but he pales in significance when compared to how the woman is struggling inside her own mind and body.

All of the failings here are caused by Besson, whether it's his inane script (and, believe me, there's a reference in the final scenes that may well cause a few fans of true, classic sci-fi to cry out in disgust - Kubrick would not be impressed) or his horrible, slapdash approach to the half-baked material. The editing choices, the gaping plot holes, the groan-inducing lack of anything approaching logic (not REAL logic, obviously, but even simpler movie logic), the poor CGI, the aspects of Kabbalism mixed in. Besson, as writer and director, can take the blame for all of it.

But, hey, it's already a bit of a hit at the box office. Although, just perhaps, that may say more about our own evolution than anything in the movie itself.

4/10

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