Movies #30- Oldboy

Oldboy Oldboy is one of the films on the Guardian reader’s list of 40 greatest foreign films that I hadn’t seen and I felt slightly guilty about the fact. Why? Well, back in the day when I was more involved in Hong Kong movie fandom in the crazyweb, I watched as more and more of my acquaintances made the movie from Hong Kong focused movie watching to a hybrid of Hong Kong and Korean cinema. One after one people started to wander off to this other wing of cinema. Me? I was still watching a lot of HK cinema, obsessing a little bit over the Milkway Image Group and the other talented post-handover filmmakers and moving back to watching some European films (French crime drama, anyone?)*, so I pretty much completely missed the Korean boat. Which is really too bad, but, with the hundreds of films I’m interested and have yet to see (with more being made every year) I miss the boat on a lot of things (people at work always say “you haven’t seen film x?” I just shrug. )

So I hadn’t seen Oldboy and I felt like a schmuck. Netflix to the rescue 🙂

I guess I should review it.

Oldboy is a gripping thriller from Korean director Park Chan-wook. Perverse, violent and funny it’s the kind of film that demands attention for its entire running time. Who? What? Why? What happens next? Questions ran through my mind the whole time and while the plot required some suspension if disbelief, it was thoroughly satisfying. Based on a manga of the same name. It tells the story of Oh Dae-su, a Korean businessman who is kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years. Let go, he suddenly becomes focused on those very same questions- for the purpose of gaining his revenge (speaking of which I’ve got Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance in my queue as well, so I’ll have Park’s “Vengeance Trilogy” sorted in short order.) What follows is a winding, disturbing tapestry of a film. Full of uncertainty and tension it’s a crazy ride through a whirlwind of mystery, violence, sex, memory and intrigue that culminates in a powerful final reel. Not for the squeamish, there’s a scene where a live octopus is eaten for one example, or the prudish, Oldboy is nevertheless a highly recommended film.

*And I just learned that the king of French crime actors, the brilliant Alain Delon, is going to work with Johnnie To on a new film. How incredibly cool is that? It’s like… I don’t even know what it’s like. It’s crazy. That’s what it is.