Punished in 150 Words or Less

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Somewhat interesting structure- wise, and blessed with a very fine performance from Anthony Wong, Punished - which tells the story of a wealthy businessman who hires a man to hunt down the people who kidnapped and killed his daughter - still can't really escape the shadow of the seventeen thousand other Asian revenge thrillers from the past few years. The way the threads unravel is by no means unique - we flash back to see what happened to the girl as each person in the conspiracy's uncovered - but it's done well enough, and the way the film doesn't allow any detectives into the story feels like a freshly defiant rejection in the face of an overused storytelling trope for these things. But we get it - revenge doesn't work! Everything goes wrong, nobody's satisfied, and somewhere a Liam Neeson gets his wings.

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