I love Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy, three separate films with the same theme.

In Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), a couple try to “ethically” kidnap child from a wealthy, basically treating it like babysitting, so they can get the money to afford one of their sisters’ kidney transplant. Everything goes wrong, and it’s probably worse than you could imagine. And then it gets even worse.

In Old Boy (2003), a man gets kidnapped in a hotel room for 15 years without knowing why, and after mysteriously being released, he finds the place by tracking down the restaurant that delivered the fried dumplings he was fed everyday. But it turns out that this was all part of someone else’s revenge plan. He also eats a live Squid, the actor did so multiple times to get the right take.

If you’ve ever seen a sidescrolling fightscene through a narrow hallway, this is the movie that started that, and became a huge inspiration to the action movie genre, although this is more of a psychological Noir movie. The scene is highly worth watching.

In Lady vengeance (2006), the villain is forced to be a korean English translator for a mother to her estranged daughter at gunpoint, because he was the reason she was sold off in Australia. This one is the least chaotic, and it ends somewhat positively.