Directed by:
Chan-wook ParkCinematography:
Chung-hoon ChungComposer:
Young-wook ChoCast:
Min-shik Choi, Ji-tae Yoo, Hye-jung Kang, Dal-su Oh, Byung-ok Kim, Seung-shin Lee, Yeon-seok Yoo, Jin-seo Yoon, Kwang-rok Oh, Soo-hyun Kim, Myeong-shin Park (more)Plots(1)
Oh Dae-su is an ordinary Seoul businessman with a wife and little daughter who, after a drunken night on the town, is abducted and locked up in a strange, private prison. No one will tell him why hes there and who his jailer is and his fury builds to a single-minded focus of revenge. 15 years later, he is unexpectedly freed, given a new suit, a cell-phone and 5 days to discover the mysterious enemy who had him imprisoned. Seeking vengeance on all those involved, he soon finds that his enemys tortures are just beginning. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (15)
A simple story told in a needlessly incomprehensible way. The visual aspect is captivating, the music is amazing and the actors are great, but the story itself, particularly its conclusion, left me cold. The Asians are simply different, as they express themselves differently and perceive things differently – and with Oldboy, whose story otherwise has something to it, I didn’t experience what the individual dramatically escalated scenes were trying to tell me. But I’m very curious about the American remake.
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Revenge can take many forms. It can be cold-blooded, sadistic, brutal, chaotic or even systematic. For South Korean director Park Chan-wook, it is mainly problematic on every possible level, from its conceptual and moral aspects, to the pleasure of carrying it out. In a gripping stylised form, Park maps the protagonist’s bloody odyssey to uncover the sense of his long imprisonment and the person who orchestrated it. In the ingeniously constructed story, the viewer is in the same position as the tragic hero, whose ideas about the course and further development of his revenge are constantly frustrated by his nemesis. At the time of its release, much attention was focused on the extreme scenes, but it has already been forgotten that Oldboy brilliantly combines excess, tense emotions, coolness, pathos, wrenching catharsis and humorous exaggeration, all of which work superbly here. In addition to that, Park goes much deeper in his screenplay and revenge thus becomes only a McGuffin in a wrenching treatise on anger and its ability to blind the one feeling it, the toxic nature of machismo, and the painful journey toward seeing the light. Here, the epiphany has the meaning of both transcending one’s own egocentric point of view and seeing what one has done to others, as well as the utterly devastating impact that it has on one’s own conscience and personal happiness, which can then be found only in oblivion. ____ Oldboy was Park’s first collaboration with Jung Jung-hoon, who subsequently became Park’s court cinematographer, and their symbiotic ambition, manifested in outrageous camera compositions and staging challenges, pushed the film, Park’s filmography and even international cinema to a new level. After all, it is no coincidence that many years later Edgar Wright chose Jung to shoot Last Night in Soho, which features incredible camerawork, where two versions of one character alternate in one shot without the use of digital effects, but thanks solely to the choreography of the actors and the movement of the camera.
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A film that has a hero. A film that has charisma. A film that has a charismatic hero. I'm slowly moving from South Korean romance to something edgier. Of course Old Boy was the best choice. It offers everything from really hardcore fight scenes to eating an octopus alive... to the amazing (but truly amazing) music and the fantastic lines. So my message to everyone: Whether you're a boy or a girl, you have to see this!
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An Asian miracle that had no effect on me. The musical accompaniment is flawless, but visually, even the highly praised scenes reach the limit of mediocrity. If there is anything of brilliance here, it's the twist; too bad that right after it, director Chan-wook Park "adds more blood" and loses me again on the way to the climax. I understand everyone who was moved by the last minute or captivated by the film as a whole. I understand them, but I will never be one of them.
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I have a problem with Asian films because their emotionality is beyond me. I don't deny the camera finesse, a few visually memorable scenes (although judging by the reviews I was expecting a much, much more visually striking work), but a three-minute fight in one uninterrupted shot, a close-up of teeth being pulled and a live octopus being eaten don't make a memorable film. First and foremost, it's about the story, and the story here – told in a somewhat incomprehensible way for my taste – couldn't quite reach me, as well as the twist and emotional outpourings in the last twenty minutes. I can't help it, Oldboy is overrated in my eyes, which is not to say it's not worth watching.
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