Oldboy

Title: Oldboy
Rating: 4.5/5
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Starring: Min-Sik Choi, Hye-Jeong Kang, Ji-Tae Yu
Language: Korean
Director: Chan-Wook Park

“You want to torture me, but I can simply kill myself first. Do you want revenge, or do you want the truth?”

The second part of the celebrated ‘Vengeance’ trilogy, as before many of the same themes appear. The notion of getting retribution from those who have done you wrong runs rampant, and as with the first part this is no simple quest, two main characters seeking vengeance for the atrocities committed against them. With enough stylised action scenes to keep the Tarantino fans appeased, a strong enough feeling of emotion running deep throughout relying less on language than physicality maintaining a degree of enjoyability for those who despise subtitles, and a mysterious dramatic and romantic element providing a constant questioning to delight those in urge of a drama, this is a cross-genre effort that caters to fans of all these styles and sails its way into one of my favourite films and is almost certainly the crowning glory of Mr. Park.

Dae-Su Oh (Min-Sok Choi) was a young man who liked to drink, with a wife and child; to call him an honourable or intelligent man would be a gross overstatement, but he was normal up until the day he was taken and imprisoned for 15 years of his life. Gassed each night so his captors could clean his room and cut his hair whilst he slept, he was devoid of all human interaction with only the same, soggy dumplings to eat. Until the day he was released, he is left clues to find not only the man responsible for his incarceration, but more importantly to the reason behind it. In his journey, diving into his past looking for the answer he comes to meet young Woo-Jin Lee (Ji-Tae Yu), and whilst the romance blossoms he seeks his vengeance.

The strength of acting from all three major characters is quite simply phenomenal. The faithful love interest, developing slowly in a realistic and altogether beatific manner, the lead’s all-consuming hatred against the man responsible for his imprisonment, and even to the curious character turning the wheels, asking just what was done to him to warrant such actions? Once again the cinematography has seen careful work, from the side-scrolling action shot in an almost 2-D ‘beat-em-up’ video game manner to the representation of his insanity. All of these aspects were no doubt assisted by the well chosen soundtrack, largely consisting of classical music used to accentuate the mood of the piece. Not to mention the final reveal providing one of the most powerful twists that you should have seen coming but probably didn’t.

Chan-Wook Park has through his works raised himself to be one of my favourite directors, and it is here that he displays his immense versatility, creative ideas and cinematographic talents, with often poetic dialogue, unconventional comical tones to lighten certain scenes, an expertly chosen soundtrack and realistic characters in an immersive and captivating story; absolutely sublime in every detail.

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