73 - Oldboy review

Revenge. Truth. Karma. Obsession. Hypnosis. Isolation. Oldboy touches on so many themes that by the end we’ve experienced an overload similar to a professor who crams too many lessons into too few lectures. That director Chan-wook Park studied philosophy comes as less of a surprise than if he hadn’t.

The film begins as intriguingly as few other have. Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-Sik), a raging drunk and deadbeat dad, wakes up to find himself imprisoned in a small room. His unseen captors offer him no explanation, but they do provide him with a TV and some journals to take notes. Occasionally valium gas fills the room, and before long he will reawaken to a clean room and a haircut. The news informs Oh that his wife has been murdered, his daughter taken away, and the blame rests at his feet.

Fifteen soul-crushing years pass. Suddenly, Oh’s captors release him back into the world with money and a cell phone, but no explanation. His thirst for living contact runs so deep that after eagerly embracing a stranger, he gobbles down a live octopus, taking joy in the tentacles thrashing about his mouth. Mido (Gang Hye-Jung), the beautiful young chef who served him the squirmy delicacy, takes him in, becoming captivated not just by him, but his story. However, leisure time ranks far back on Oh’s to-do list; vengeance for life lost and answers for why are his driving force. Where he was once an unbearable loser, he now has strength and focus that are nearly unshakable. Nearly.

I won’t give more specifics. Oh’s quest very quickly leads him to the mastermind. Oh could easily rip this man apart, but then the reasons for his imprisonment would be lost, so he sets out to find the answers. Although hard to believe, the fifteen-year stint in a locked room was but the setup of a revenge plan so fiendish I’m hard pressed to remember a film that tops it. The spark that set the intense cycle of pain amongst all of the characters in motion states that one should watch small sins, for they can have damning consequences for all. Whether the spark works brilliantly or serves as a cheap excuse will likely be as remembered as the scenes where characters graphically yank out teeth.

Oldboy gained electric buzz amongst the film community, especially after a 2nd place finish at Cannes, and had cinephiles chattering about the glory of Korean cinema. In the process, the staggering flaws of Korean (and some would say all Asian types) of cinema are just as vivid as the assets. Great set pieces and a zeal for the medium are bundled with a nonsensical plot, extreme sadomasochism, and hugely long-winded expository rants. We can’t merely learn the truth, the antagonist must TELL us the truth in painstaking detail, almost as if channeling the screenwriter making his pitch to the producers. Does the Korean language have an equivalent word for ‘bretivy’?

I enjoyed Oldboy, and very nearly loved it. The twisted revenge plot, the one take fight scene where Oh encounters a huge group of thugs with a hammer, and the slick set pieces all work in its favor. But I left the film behind with a strangely unsatisfied feeling, like a meal that had a flash of brilliant flavor but left you hungry afterwards. For all the talking and philosophizing, once the plot was out of the way, little else remains. Considering the physical and emotional brutality of the material, that I felt nearly apathetic instead of thrilled or horrified says that perhaps the film wasn’t all that it seemed.

3 out of 5