Review: Old Boy

Park Chan-Wook’s revenge-feuled thriller, Oldboy is re-released this year after a decade.

This film has achieved international success even though being in the Korean language.
It explores the depths of insanity and captivity before digressing into incestuous relationships and vengeance.

The film follows Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi), a family man who is grabbed off the street and imprisoned in a room by unseen captors. 15 years passed and without explanation Dae-su is released from the confinement of his room.

Dae-su then meets Mi-do (Hye-jeong Kang) who takes pity on him and falls in love with Mi-do. He intends to find his captors and seek the ultimate revenge.

But their love turns out to be incestuous and that is planned by the very captor, Woo-jin Lee (Ji-tae Yu).

He blames Dae-su for her sister's suicide and confined him for revenge. Woo-jin believes he has avenged her sister's death and enforced the worse type of vengeance on Dae-su, causing much more torment than a simple killing. 

But Dae-su's sincere love for Mi-do awakens Woo-jin his love for his sister and he commits suicide instead of killing Dae-su. Then the horrible revenge play ends.

What makes "Oldboy" different from other usual "revenge" films is that it persistently pursues and asks viewers a single question of "why he has been confined for 15 years," as opposed to "who has imprisoned him."

Throughout the film, director Chan-Wook's attention to detail is quite incredible, and almost every frame of the film is beautifully composed and rich with reflections of the characters’ twisted psyches. Even the set design, too, is complex and fascinating.

Recently this movie is remaked in Hollywood, by Spike Lee. But the film is criticized severely by the critics. 
I think Chan-Wook's sensible image of the original work is hard enough to realize in Hollywood.


Reference

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364569/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

http://sar914.blog.me/20200829585

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2005

http://badassdigest.com/2013/11/26/oldboy-movie-review-get-locked-up-in-this-glum-lifeless-remake/