Vengeance is hers, confusion ours

Those confused by the plotlines of Korean director Park Chan-wook's brilliantly audacious Oldboy may not be any less worried by the final episode in his violent revenge trilogy.

Dramatically it is all over the place, as Lee Keum-ja (Lee Yeong-ae), a prisoner who has helped many of her cellmates in saintly fashion during her 13-year stay in jail, asks them to help her bring to book the man who wrongly incarcerated her for the murder of a child in her care.

Flashbacks whizz by and the plot thickens. Park's undoubted flair as director is at the mercy of a technique that sometimes seems there for its own sake; the often brilliant film is actually going nowhere very much, apart from showing us the director's extraordinary sleight of hand.

This is possibly because his sympathy for Lady Vengeance isn't as obvious as it was for the male leading characters in his previous films. Psychologically, too, the film has obvious flaws. But at least it has a slam-bang ending that is appropriately terrifying as the woman who didn't do it confronts the evil man who did (Choi Min-sik).

This sequence alone justifies the film, proclaiming its maker as a talent of world class. It's a pity that he is so often prone to gilding the lily too melodramatically for comfort.

Lady Vengeance
Cert: 18