Lady Vengeance...

...and The Vengeance Trilogy.

Park Chan-Wook's Lady Vengeance, the third installment of his trilogy, rarely guts as well as its parent films. This story, by far the lamest (and I mean this both in the literal sense that it is wholly ineffective and inoperable, as well as in that it is totally lame, dude), seems to assume that there's a point to be made about the metaphysics of vengeance. This is also where Oldboy (the second in the series) failed. Oh Dae-su follows his boyhood specter from playground to vacant classroom and watches as he feels up Woo-jin's sister. As a flashback, it works fine, but to Park, it makes sense that Dae-su reliving this moment puts him on some kind of spiritual plane with Woo-jin. It does only in the sense that Dae-su is now in a position to empathize with Woo-jin's moral decision. Park ignores the fact that he's grounded in a world of flesh and bones (and, obviously, gallons of prop blood). Is Park implying some kind of designing force? The two men are in the hands of fate? Snooze.

The problem with this latest film is amplified. There's no room for moral decision, and the class-action vengeance suit in the third act is not a moral discussion, nor does one member need to be at all convinced of the need for action. The Angel of Vengeance, or so goes the metaphor, is the guiding force, and what kind of comment is that? A benign one. It is written into the course of history that humans will have their revenge. By constantly referencing his own films, playing casting-tag with his character actors, and presenting these pieces as a Trilogy, Park even more firmly cements us in his world of truncated psychological rules. There are only so many character traits possible, as Geum-ja's prison girlfriend plainly states, "You were only pretending, weren't you..." Park has stacked the deck. Lady Vengeance's story is not even interesting. It's a boring meditation on the themes raised in the first two films, with some plot tricks thrown in as eye candy.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance only hit this flat note once or twice, for example the parallel phone hang-up and subsequent question: Who is the real Mr. Vengeance? Get it? We're all Lady and Mr. Vengeance! It's a part of our constitution.

As a craftsman, Park certainly knows his stuff. One look at the mirror scene in the first act of Mr. will hold you until the tendon-slashing finale. Ryu's support system is neatly pared away, physically, psychologically, visually, until he is reduced to nothing more than a body. Park achieves the greatest meditation on the nature of revenge through his ruggedly sparse cinematics. Two installments later, we're barraged with a stupidly Baroque score, graphic novel blacks and browns, macabre weapons, and (haven't we gotten past this?!) HOME VIDEO FOOTAGE OF MURDER.

Highlights: The Oedipus cycle, the Achilles tendon, Lesbos. A five-year-old is hanged. The word "dickshit." A man eats a live octopus.

Lowlights: Nihilism, Buddhism, Hypnotism. Geum-ja's annoying aussie daughter. Granny in a plastic blood-safe suit.