Pieta

There is a touch too much of the handheld camera, but in general one senses that the very quality of the way this film was made is one of its justifications for being and for its raw moments.

After being subjected to disturbing scenes of abject cruelty, rape and torture, my reactions shifted from squeamish revulsion to a reluctant yet growing appreciation for Kim's thematic ambition.

The film's big reveal may not come as that much of a surprise; you may figure out where it's going well before the end. But it's the getting there that is, if not exactly fun, then certainly hypnotic.

Fascination returns at the stirring climax, when the plot neatly twists and the film's apparently simple message turns deeper, and blacker.

A mother's love for her child takes on brutal new meaning in Pieta, a film by Kim Ki-duk that's as hard to watch as it is to forget.

Like many South Korean films, revenge is a major theme here, although the way Kim handles it is particularly subtle and surprising: It sneaks up on you.

A vicious, torture-happy debt collector with some severe sexual peccadilloes is, erm, softened by the return of his estranged mother in Kim Ki-duk's deeply unsettling Pieta.

Possesses a sad, quiet power. Kim's film isn't as a cool as those made by his compatriots. But it is, in its own way, just as memorable.

Succeeds in repulsing and enlightening viewers simultaneously, even if its views on self-sacrifice and redemption are cynical.

This is a grisly fable that never goes where we expect it to. And it has some important things to say about both revenge and sacrifice.

Nasty is as nasty does, and this lurid if aspirational potboiler does its thing, but the camera could have been let in on the joke.