This extremely grim tale deals with a deaf mute who's fired from his job for a minor detail of neglect, he then gets ripoffed by vicious organ dealers and loses a kidney when he tries to raise money for his sister's kidney operation. He then kidnaps his rich boss' daughter inspired by an anarchist girlfriend, but things go fatally wrong and the daughter drowns. His boss is devastated by grief and sets out to kill him, meanwhile our deaf mute are after the organ dealers looking for revenge.
A 129 mins long flawless masterpiece which is incredibly gruesome and gory (not in a flashy Miike kinda way you can distance yourself to) but also very humane and beautiful. You really feel for both of these desperate people in their sad quest for 'justice'. The cinematography and especially the sound is top notch so try see it in a theatre.
Everybody was laughing during "Ichi The Killer" at the last Copenhagen Filmfestival, but not during "Sympathy", some were actually gaging in disgust of harsh images. There are also social comments on the have and have-nots and the conflict between the neighbor in the North, but not in the easy preachy way.
Chan-wook Park is a genius and has singlehandedly changed South Korea from an somewhat uninspired HK/Japanese copycat nation to a country one should look out for, in my humble opinion. 10/10
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