Year: 2003
Director: Park Chan-wook
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Second in his thematic “Vengeance Trilogy” after Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and before Lady Vengeance (2005), South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) is quite a visceral picture that is simultaneously engaging and repulsive. Based on the Japanese manga Old Boy, by writer Garon Tsuchiya and illustrator Nobuaki Minegishi, Park’s script uses the source merely as a springboard into a more complex and violent world.
After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su (Min-Sik Choi) is released, only to find that he must find his captor in five days.
Oldboy uses such gut imagery to create symbols, assigning ultra-violence, sexual perversity, and sadomasochistic torture metaphoric reasoning that ripens the twisting narrative into a stark emotional confrontation. Shrouded by cryptic allusions and uncertain causalities, Park’s cinematic atmosphere contains a dreamlike quality best described as Kafkaesque. Indeed the film-maker would cite Kafka as a source of inspiration, although I'd say he's less into allegories and engages his audience on a raw emotional level.
On the surface, Park’s variety of violent savagery push the boundaries of censorship, but when studied one will see the genius of his editing. Park avoids glorifying the content and implies violence by cleverly cutting around the acts. Constructing a thriller that avoids a predictable outcome is quite remarkable. Park uses color saturations, intentional grain, bright colors, and wild formal manipulation to match the primal nature of the story.
Oldboy broods on the self-deprecating vanity of revenge, and presents the most terrible case of the three against the futility of vengeance. It's unfortunately often dismissed as exploitation, and although I'll agree that at times its hard to watch, it's a pretty smart well-made film that pushes buttons when it comes to social commentary.
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