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During her stay in prison Geum-Ja transforms from a naive youg girl, to somewhat of a Mother Theresa that kills, helping fellow female prisoners who are weak & vulnerable like she was at the age 19. When Geum-Ja finally catches Mr. Baek, she administers pure vigilante justice, which I found disturbing and difficult to watch.
The ending scene with the tofu cake was brilliant. Traditionally, in Korea, when someone leaves jail they eat tofu, to consume the whiteness/goodness of the tofu and leave the darkness of their past behind, well Geum-Ja does a little more then eat a piece of the tofu, she submerges her face into the tofu cafe.
This is the last in director Chan-Wook Park’s trilogy dealing with the theme of Vengeance. His prior two movies “Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance” and “Oldboy” dealt with similar themes of vengeance and the effects vengeance has upon the people involved in that link of violence. Also, since I am junkie for asian cinema, I had a blast watching various characters from the director’s previous films make cameo appearances (Besides the two main characters, Geum-Ja who appeared in the director’s first film “Joint Security Area” and Mr. Baek who was “Oldboy”).
Towards the beginning when a lady news announcer was shown on tv it was the charming “Mido” from Oldboy, notice the two people waiting in the alley to kidnap Geum-Ja and her daughter, they were the two principle characters in “Sympathy For Mr. Vengeace”, the Pastry store owner was the gold-tooth dude in Oldboy, and when Geum-Ja finally met the ghost of the 5 year old boy towards the end of the film, the 5 year old boy transformed into an adult - who so happened to be the main villain in Oldboy! See what happens to people consumed with vengeance?. "
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