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From the same director, Park Chan-wook, and key character, Choi Min-sik, of the Korean predecessor of the same genre of film noir and the same theme of revenge, "Old Boy" (2004), the film reproduces a lot of virtuosic cinematographic and musical properties of the former: freeze frame, freeze action, tight frontal close ups of characters and use of static camera and musical motif. Most of these features do not repeat as the story progresses, making the film highly readable in artistic terms.

Because of the similarity of the above, there is no doubt that it carries a high degree of horizontal intertextuality between the 2 films: the audience refers to "Old Boy" and makes comparisons between them in various aspects including but not limited to narrative structure, cinematography, use of music, staging of actors and other filmic features.

Same as "Old Boy", the film magnifies violence, the ideology of physical excruciation and revenge but downplays them in terms of visuals as the process of torture and the action of violent staging are covertly expressed by coarsely elliptical editing without a deluge of excessively disgusting mise-en-scenes.

In terms of musical aesthetics, the film, like "Old Boy", is also featured by a disparity of music and narrative context. The use of orchestral music produces a sense of congeniality and harmony in melody which is consonant with neither the unstable psychiatrics of Geum Ja (Lee Young-ae) nor the motif of revenge.

In narrative terms, director Park uses discontinuous editing and flashbacks to deliver segmented trunks of narrative, especially at the beginning. It does not come with intense suspense as it is in "Old Boy". The story is not convincing on why one should be sympathetic to Geum Ja. Her revenge on her former English teacher Mr. Baek (Choi Min-sik) is purely motivated by personal interest in disguise of a falsely forwarded justification of public interest. As such, the film does not carry any exculpated theme and is just for visual and acoustic aesthetics. Audience who like the diegetic tricks and hermeneutic elements of "Old Boy" will be disappointed.

註：本評論純屬影評作者個人意見，並不代表本網立場。
Note: This views presented in this review is solely the views of the critic who wrote it and do not represent the stance of our website.

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