Sympathy For Lady Vengeance (2005)

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I recognize this movie’s faults but it left such a strong impression on me that I had to rewatch it the next day before writing this review. I highly recommend watching it a second time if you’re feeling lukewarm after a first watch.

Hits the right notes for me with the dark humor, deliberate pace, mesmerizing, chilling yet oddly engaging lead performance, personal stakes, and splendid editing through multiple time periods. A second viewing brings to light a lot of hidden details in the early parts of the movie that only matter later, details which you can easily miss the first time around.

I’m seeing these revenge films all out of order but I don’t think it really matters. It’s mostly a fabricated trilogy anyway.

I really like intelligent but damaged characters with a plan, an infallible one perhaps, who are dead set on a mission backed by well defined motivations. I also like how this movie doesn’t glorify violence, and also doesn’t carry a big reveal or anything of the sort.

I think from a technical and stylistic standpoint this is quite similar to Oldboy, but this one worked much better on a personal level for me. The two movies are interestingly similar in a way: in Oldboy, we follow the protagonist against the backdrop of a villain with a vicious plan years in the making. In this movie, it’s flipped around on its head — we follow the protagonist with a vicious plan years in the making. I much prefer this iteration.

Regardless, I need to rewatch Oldboy before I make a final stand on this. I can easily see this movie going up another notch on rewatch a few years down the line.

The way I see it is… this movie is quite simply a striking work of art.

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where to begin, doono why the movie is named Lady Vengeance, yeah everything is somehow tied to her, but still - for me the real Vengeance was the part with the grieving families - them finding out what really happened to their kidnapped kids - the turmoil, the arguments and conclusion - them taking the law into their own hands, meting out justice - was intense, understandable and relatable... that alone was worth the rest of time that was wasted watching this.

the FL aint likeable, the back story with all the women was redundant, most of them didn't play any or just minor roles in her "grand" revenge scheme. the only one that did do sh*t was the last one (who got beat by the fat cannibal lezbo cause she allowed a mosquito to bite her), as she went and got into a relationship with that psycho after getting paroled, keeping tabs on him and thus being close enough to drug him when the time came.

the FL was all over the place - not always justified or logical... like her going to meet-up with her daughter. searching for her - logical, as she needed to make sure she was alive and well. but when u r hell bent on revenge, why drag ur child into it?!? doesn't make sense. finish what you've started, what's more urgent, then go see ur daughter when its safe - no???

the ending also, WTH was that? the kid wakes up coughing on the thick smoke in the room, rushing out in the snow, in bare-feet, her adoptive parents asleep? dead?!??? left unanswered... why?

donno, just weird and not in a good way, even anticlimactic, she got 13yrs for kidnapping a kid - which was the truth, and she may not have physically choked/killed him, but her kidnapping him enabled that psycho to do what he loves best, and her confessing to save her child/baby enabled him to continue kidnapping and killing more children - so she wasn't framed or wrongly sentenced. but she enabled all those families to find justice and peace, so something came out of this movie.

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