|
Chan-wook Park’s beautifully made 2003 South Korean film “Oldboy” is an experience that is difficult to forget — difficult enough to make some want to scrub out their brains and pour bleach in their eyes just to forget the shocking ending.
This film is just that good.
The audience manipulation is so strong and so calculated that it is impossible not to feel the same horror and longing to forget as the film’s protagonist Oh Dae-su.
Yet “Oldboy” is a revenge film at its core.
Oh Dae-su is kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years by an unknown enemy.
He is locked up, completely alone while he fills page after page of prison dairies trying to determine who may have done this to him.
When he is returned to the world, he finds that he must find his captor within five days.
The story that follows is entertaining and fun as well as being dark and fantastic.
Many Americans have the impression that foreign films are boring and not accessible to the American audience.
“Oldboy” is proof that foreign filmmaking is not only entertaining, but far more fresh and interesting that most any American film today — especially anything from Hollywood.
Sometimes going to the theater to see a Hollywood film can actually be a challenge to be entertained or surprised.
You have to purposely keep your brain from functioning in order to not see what’s coming, but “Oldboy” will challenge your imagination and literally live up to the cliché of keeping you guessing until the end. This film pretty much blows Quentin Tarantino’s revenge film “Kill Bill” out of the water.
The revenge does not end there.
“Oldboy” is only the second film in Chan-wook Park’s “vengeance trilogy,” the first being “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and the last in the trilogy is “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.”
The other films are great, but “Oldboy” is by far the best in the bunch.
Though it will disturb even the most hardened viewer, there is something about “Oldboy” that will keep people coming back to revisit the film as well as cruelly recommending it to friends.
 Add as favorites (24) | Views: 270
|
