Not so with "Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance", the first film in Park Chan-Wook's "Vengeance Trilogy". Some people might not like the film's initial slow pace, but in exhaustively setting up all the characters and getting to know them intimately, we are more powerfully affected by the emotional devastation they face. This movie spends lots of time building up to the violence, and the violence itself is fairly brief, and is never glamorized; it is brutal, ugly and efficient. Then there is lots of time spent as the various characters are forced to deal with the physical and emotional consequences of their vengeful acts.

It is precisely because the movie spends so much time getting to know both the killers and victims, that you care enough about the characters to want them to get their revenge, and understand why they feel they deserve it. When they finally do get it, you know the characters intimately enough to realize (as they do) that their vengeance is empty and ends up destroying them.

Powerful filmmaking, and for my money, it's Park's best.