I added Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance to my queue consecutively with Old Boy. Both movies are directed by the same guy. I'd heard a lot of praise for Old Boy, so I wanted to check it out. At the same time, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance sounded like a sweet title for a movie so I said, "Why not..."

Of course, upon watching Old Boy - which ultimately ceased to captivate me - I forgot to delete Sympathy from my Blockbuster Online queue. After all, I have about 35 movies waiting for delivery... and this was about number 33. Somehow... just somehow it ended up in my mailbox, even though V for Vendetta and Inside Man preceded it by a long shot.

In any case, the movie was here and it seemed like a waste to just return it without a chance. Two hours later, I feel relatively the same way I felt upon completing Old Boy... underwhelmed... passive... neutral... Sympathy's most distinct difference from Old Boy, is the substantial lack of dialogue. Clearly, the director forgot the meaning of deleted scenes. Instead of dragging the movie for 120 minutes, it could've easily been truncated to a solid 80 minutes. Then again, the director probably sought atmospheric effect by the dreary pacing.

The movie starts to pick and pack up in the last 20 minutes. Until then, you're sort of wondering the main point of the film... a question frequently asked when viewing run-of-the-mill independent movies. So is there a pot of gold waiting for you at the end of the rainbow? Put it this way... if you watch Shyamalan's latter movies suffering the Sixth Sense syndrome, you're setting yourself up for grave disappointment.
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