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Oldboy (2003)

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From Time Out London

It’s easy to feel blasé about the steady stream of action-oriented movies from the Far East, but this latest head-spinner from the director of the crunching ‘Sympathy for Mr Vengeance’ is far, far too good to leave to the ‘Asia Extreme’ crowd.

When we first meet businessman Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-Sik), he’s a drunken boor, though he’d doubtless sober up if he knew what was coming. Abducted by persons unknown, he’s held prisoner for 15 years, until he’s just as unexpectedly released. Still none the wiser, he falls into a relationship with a sushi-bar hostess, whereupon his captor contacts him by mobile and offers a deal: if he can work out why he was kidnapped in the first place, the villain will offer up his life – if not, the girl cops it.

For Oh Dae-Su, getting mad and getting even amount to virtually the same thing. The sequence where he rearranges some low-life’s dental work will doubtless attract over-excited attention, much like the jaw-dropping one-take hammer-wielding skirmish in a corridor. But the upfront mayhem shouldn’t be allowed to distract from the film’s emotional depth or indeed its brilliant lead performance. For the protagonist, vengeance is a voyage of discovery, yet his newfound propensity towards violence troubles him, and his burning desire to confront his secretive nemesis may be fuelled by lingering self-doubt that he deserved his fate. Whatever happens, he’ll never be the same man again.

Choi Min-Sik is in the Pacino or De Niro class, running the gamut from terrifying rage to abject degradation. The implausibilities in the plot melt away because we’re living the experience with him, thanks also in part to the bravura expressiveness of Park’s direction. Hitchcock and Fincher are reference points, but this combines visceral punch, a tortured humanity and even an underlying Korean political resonance given the weight of the past. Quite an achievement then, and well worthy of its Cannes prize.

Author: TJ

Time Out London Issue 1782: October 13-20, 2004

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ndeb said...

Posted on Oct 03 2007 21:41 I'd totally forgotten about the violence until I read the review from yduric.... but thinking about it again now, yes, there are some very vivid and violent scenes; and perhaps the film would have been better without them, as it would have avoided this kind of easy criticism. But - to take another example - would Reservoir Dogs have been the same without the severed ear...? No.
So taking the film the way it is - the extraordinary elements are the way the viewer is plunged directly into the middle of an inexplicable situation, the calibre of the acting, the remarkable build in the story, the emotional force, and the spectacular visual sense. This is s a film that will remain in the memory, and cannot be recommended highly enough.

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yduric said...

Posted on Sep 01 2007 01:40 Well. I may (or may not) be among the few who totally disagree with the extraordinarily generous reviews this 'film' received, but to me it is only a huge pile of crap disguised as art. Why? Because I do not consider some fast paced fighting scenes so often seen in average MTV-clips as an achievement in direction. Because I do not consider truly ridiculous and laughable scenes such as live tongue-cutting or teeth-removal, added here for supposed 'shock-value', as impressive, like so many people (and apparently also the critics at Cannes) did. This is only a gigantic display of bad taste that is boring and nothing else. And, most of all, I do not forgive Mr Park Chae-Woo his immense pretentiousness. Did he try to show us a re-interpreted greek tragedy or Monte-Christo revisited? If this is the case, it is a total failure,especially once we know what all this on-screen hysteria was about. To sum up, this is only a huge 'screen of smoke' generated to prevent the viewer from seeing the garbage that lies beneath. Unfortunately, it worked well, too well for many, hopefully not for everyone. It seems that as in politics, the bigger a lie is, the easier it can be swallowed.

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