I recently got a chance to re-watch what is quite possibly my favorite movie of all time. Oldboy, the 2003 film by Park Chan-wook.
The trailer:
Oh Dae-su is a husband and a father, but he has made bad choices and he is a drunk. One night, on his daughter's birthday, he is kidnapped. He is held in a hotel room that has been converted into a prison cell. 15 years pass, with only a TV to keep him company, and no word on why this has been done to him. He attempts suicide several times. He jerks off to lady pop stars in music videos. He learns about the world. They give him the same food every day. He trains his body by punching a wall. Then one day he is set free. He is given a cell phone and a wallet full of money, and he is told he has 5 days to find out who is responsible for his imprisonment and why. Revenge ensues.
I actually saw this movie back when it first came out, and I was so impressed by it that I watched it again with each and every one of my close movie-buff friends. This movie made Park Chan-wook an international name. I remember when his next movie came out - Lady Vengeance - I actually got to see it at one of Portland's many great art-house theaters. He recently came out with his first English language film, Stoker. I would also recommend it. Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars for Stoker ***(*). But, then again, I would recommend every one of his movies, they are all *** 3 stars or higher, and all of the Vengeance trilogy (of which Oldboy is the middle film) are **** 4 stars or above in my book. JSA Joint Security Area is probably his next best work; I would also give it **** stars.
Old Boy is a tour-de-force. It is visually amazing. The cast give incredible performances. The story is fantastic (everybody loves a good revenge story). There is this great dark humor to the film that lets you relax a couple of times, which is great. Alfred Hitchcock was famous for a lot of reasons, but one of them was his theory on how a good thriller should be composed. He said you had to punctuate the tenseness with laughter and smiles, so the audience doesn't get mentally exhausted before the end. This vein of humor is what separates Oldboy from a lot of other thrillers. It is incredible how much the humor comes through even for someone like me that had no cultural reference or experience with the language. My life has given me some of that since, but when I first saw Oldboy I had none of it.
I should probably mention that the Vengeance trilogy is only a trilogy in a thematic sense. They are three movies all about revenge. You do not have to watch them in any order.
There are so many moments in the film I would like to talk about, but I am restraining myself for the sake of your experience. I will spoil only one, but it is early in the film and what I am going to say will give away little of the plot. There is a scene in which Oh Dae-su eats a live octopus. This octopus was real, people. We don't do that in the US for movies. Well, if you watch Apocalypse Now you can actually see some of that (the ox they slaughter was real). The octopus wraps its tentacles around Choi Min-sik's hands and face, desperately attempting to free itself from his mouth. This image is etched in my brain.
Do yourself a favor and watch this movie. Do it before the remake comes out. ***** 5 stars.
If you want to enjoy some other Korean cinema, here are some of my favorites (not including Park's other movies):
No Mercy ***(*)
The Thieves ***
Please Teach Me English ****
3-Iron ****
Memories of Murder ***(*)
The Good, The Bad, The Weird ***(*)
The Man From Nowhere ****
I Saw The Devil ***(*)
Save the Green Planet ***
Glove ***
Going By The Book ***(*)
Attack the Gas Station ****
Mother ***(*)
Bad Guy ***
The Housemaid ***
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring ****
I'm probably forgetting some. Korea has some good cinema. We're just finding that out over here, but they have been putting up quality stuff for a little over a decade now.
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