In a Vicious Sadist, the Faintest Glimmer of Soul Morally cunning and with a tone as black as pitch, "Pieta," the 18th film from the South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, is a deeply unnerving revenge movie in which redemption is dangled like a cat toy before a cougar. The beast in question is Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin), a merciless bag man for a powerful moneylender who cripples slum-dwelling debtors to collect on their insurance claims. As cold to himself as to his clients, he lives in a comfortless flat where the entrails from the previous night's chicken dinner still decorate the bathroom floor. So when a strange woman (Cho Min-soo) begins to stalk him, claiming to be the mother who abandoned him long ago, Kang-do barely hesitates: he rapes her. As heartless as the capitalism that literally grinds his clients - whose limbs are ceremoniously crushed by the machines from which they make their living - Kang-do nevertheless begins a gradual transformation. Vanquished by the woman's gentle presence and sorrowful gaze, he begins to lose his stomach for the job; for the first time, he feels vulnerable, although his former victims may not be his most imminent threat. Filled with feisty women and cowering men, "Pieta" twists human emotions into pretzels of perversion. As its title (evoking the artistic representation of Mary cradling the body of Jesus) suggests, the film makes passing religious allusions but never to the point of intrusion. Beautifully captured by Jo Yeong-jik, its images mesmerize despite a despicable central character. "Anyone you want to kill?" he asks the woman, by way of a gift. And though more horrors are suggested than shown, the film's final moments will linger longer than any number of severed heads or gushing arteries.