Want to see something which is not ashamed to show it's gore?
Yes?
Well, today is your lucky day and I have a great movie to watch!
Flicks from Hong Kong sure can be gory, as this movie proves. This movie clearly confirms that statement. The movie opens up with a sequence in which two pregnant women and their husbands get attacked inside of their home.
The story is told in a non-chronological order, with each new chapter featuring a black tile and a quote written on it, similar to the Ju-on movies. As the title clearly states, the story is all about revenge. The story takes turns as it progresses, as shown by the opening sequence. At first one would expect that the one who seeks revenge would be somebody who avenges the four people hurt in the opening sequences. And then we are proved wrong.
This movie is nothing short of being fantastically brutally violent, but it isn't like that just for the sake of it. This is not a blatant exploitation flick as much as it certainly looks like one, there is an underlying message revealed right at the end, a lesson that anyone who holds a grudge could learn a thing from.
Just a bit of a heads up, this flick is definitely NOT for the squeamish. There's gore, there's gut-wrenching brutality, but there is also sadness. You feel pity. This movie does its job by sucking you in and having you rooting for the protagonist. While the gore isn't over-the-top (compared to a lot of movies I've seen), there is a part that I felt was a little bit more extreme than the rest of the movie and actually made my jaw drop (not something that happens often, I assure you). For cinephile like myself who has seen a lot of over-the-top gore movies in the 5,100+ movies I have watched, that shouldn't have happened but because I could relate to it through bad habits of my past, it kind of got me.
Revenge: A Love Story is exactly what it says...a revenge movie, and a love story. Plenty of gore (but not for the sake of it like so many movies) but it also has a lot of emotion that is a good watch. If you like extreme Asian cinema, this will be a good watch.
The version of Revenge: A Love Story was courtesy of Terracotta Entertainment. It is rated 18 and is sadly now out of print.