I’m sort of procrastinating this review because this is one of those movies that you see once and then never want to think about again. And it’s still amazing. For real.
So a businessman named Oh Dae-su is randomly kidnapped one day after being rescued from the police station (for drunkenness?) by his best friend. He remains in a small room for 15 years without a single person telling him why, and then one day, he is released without explanation. And he is NOT happy.
He soon meets a girl, Mi-do, and starts living with her while he tracks down his captor. After Oh Dae-su finds the man who imprisoned him, Lee Woo-jin, he is given the choice between finding out the truth of why he was imprisoned or killing him right then. Lee Woo-jin is a rich businessman and a scary dude.
The search for answers leads Oh Dae-su down a horrifying path from which he can never return (or can he?). There are crazy fighting sequences, including one that took three days to film and is one amazing continuous take.
Excuse the bad gif quality.
The film kind of reminded me of Kill Bill a little, since it’s a revenge story and Kill Bill is inspired by samurai films, and Oldboy is based on the Japanese manga of the same name, despite it being a South Korean film. But Oldboy is much richer in complexity and much more horrifying in the reveal.
The tone is incredibly dark but also very twisted, as things like hypnosis and incest start to enter the plot. Also Oh Dae-Su eats a live octopus… which the actor really did.
Also the ending is intentionally ambiguous and terrifying and left me in shock for at least an hour after the film ended.
The film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004, and is now #70 on the IMDb Top 250.
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