The Vengeance Trilogy [Blu-ray]

Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance are region B. Will not play in North America unless you have a region free machine.

Three great movies. Especially Oldboy.

If you like this film genre then you'll know what to expect. That is to not really know whats going on for most of the movie and just get carried along by the violence. 3 films in this box set;Sympathy for Mr Vengence, For me the least enjoyable of the 3 with quite a disjointed plot and new characters appearing with little to no introduction.It is still and asian revenge movie so 3 out of 5 rusty pliersLady Vengence, A woman blackmailed into taking the blame for a child murder by the kidnap of her own child spends 8 years in a mostly female prison spends her time learning about vengence from prison bullies etc. When she finally gets out she's got a "to do" list and ample experence to get things done.A good watch 4 out of 5 plastic sheets.Oldboy, Chap spends years trapped in a cheap hotel room is finally released and put on the path of revenge little knowing the motive of the people helping him. Brutal throughout and with a real twist at the end. 5 out of 5 claw hammers.

"Revenge is meaningless- it brings no profit, no benefit. What has passed is impossible to change. Nevertheless one still has a desire for revenge in one's heart." Chan-Wook ParkShould you worry when a society becomes obsessed with vengeance as a form of entertainment? In the transition from Elizabethan to Jacobean England the revenge tragedy became a popular play theme. Relying on desperation for the main character to get their own back big style with many sub plots as everyone else tried to put the boot in, as the last words were spoken any actor still standing would have been tripping over an impressive heap of corpses and trying not to slip on all the fake blood. Ranging from Shakespeare's Hamlet to Middleton's "Revenge Tragedy" (see Alex Cox's Scouse reworking of the play) the revenge theme has now been reborn Korean style in director and writer Chan Wook Park's loose trilogy.This set includes the three superbly directed movies on single disks with each film's accompanying special features so you've got 6 in all. Now the price has thankfully dropped, it may make more sense to buy them as a set (it won't save you any shelf space though over the individual editions).I found the director's commentary for the first in the series "Sympathy for Mr Vengeance" particularly useful as Park deliberately misses out scenes to keep the audience awake. Key plot points could be missed in this transfer as anything written in Korean (the redundancy form, the sister's suicide note, the revolutionaries' pamphlet in the final scene) are not translated in the subtitles. The first disk also includes a Jonathan Ross documentary on JSA, Mr Vengeance, and Oldboy. There's also small pieces on the special effects and anecdotes from the cast and crew.Park produces magnificent interior stagings, relying on a wide angle lens to exploit the maximum depth of field (I do like scenes that STAY in focus) and the lushness of his exterior nature shots. What I adore most about his directing style and writing is the matter of factness of the violence. He is not judgmental and so it is all the more shocking when it happens. The nearest equivalent being the Coen brothers' works such as Fargo or Miller's Crossing. It's also pleasing that people with disabilities such as the deaf kidnapper, Ryu (Mr Vengeance), are slipped into the plot effortlessly without the usual Hollywood fanfare of "look he's special."Because the lead characters of Mr Vengeance and Oldboy embark on their vengeance spree without particular planning, they themselves become unstuck when their planned victims fight back. One way or another they have lost something by the end of the film. In Lady Vengeance, my favourite of the three, Geum-ja Lee finds that the person who blackmailed her into going to jail for him is actually a serial killer. As she acts as the conduit for the vengeance of all the parents whose children he murdered, she uniquely does find true salvation.Just to clarify when you hear that character's name in these movies is "Park" it's not due to a director's whim- it's one of the most common family names in Korea (about 4 million people). This had me really confused when I saw my first Korean film.

Bought as a gift for my Dad who really enjoyed it. Happy customer :)

Great value here, I'd searched for sympathy for Mr vengeance on bluray and struggled to find it so was glad when I found all 3 vengeance folms together on bluray at such a great price. Honestly I'd say oldboy is easily top 3 films ever imo, I wouldn't want to spoil much here but the cinematography, the choreography, the violence.... oh the violence!!!! the score, acting are as good as it gets and if you're a fan of this genre then this is 1 of the best boxsets of remarkable cinema you can own. 5 star all day, masterpiece is used too often nowadays imo, this is a true masterpiece collection 👌

I bought this collection from Mexico, where bluray players only play region A discs. Looking at the product pictures, in the back of the case, it is mentioned that this is region free (all 3 region symbols are present A, B and C). So I bought it. when I tested the discs, only Odboy is region free, the other 2 movies are region B only. I guess if you only want Oldboy and you can't find it anywhere else and you are in a region A or C country this is ok, but since I was interested in the full trilogy this is terrible for me. I don't even have the option of returning it, because it would be quite expensive. Very disapointed.

What I like about arrow video they bring back classic with a lot of tlc my collector happy and the the vengeance trilogy is no exception a much buy hope arrow video look in manga like fist of the North star kite bring thime back in collector love it