"That's a nice-a donut."
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Oldboy (2003)
Originally released in director Chan-wook Park's native South Korea in late 2003, Oldboy was a fairly big smash on the international and film festival circuits for nearly a year and a half before finally making its way to U.S. screens earlier this year. The much anticipated film is a ferocious, and sometimes unsettling, psychological mystery/thriller about revenge and lives lost in the wake. It begs to demonstrate the sage observation, "laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone."
Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is abducted for no apparent reason and without any explanation. He is imprisoned in a small room and drugged, tortured, hypnotized, and generally isolated from the rest of the world - not necessarily in that order. He has no idea how long he would be there, and even wonders if it would be better if he did or did not know. In the midst of this, he learns that his family has been murdered and that he is wanted for the crime. Eventually, out of the blue, he is released and is even provided with new clothes and money. Of course there are many questions to be asked and many emotions running through him, but his main intent is to find out why he was taken prisoner and to enact revenge on his captors. Along the way he meets Mi-do (Hye-jeong Kang), a friendly waitress who helps him out. The problem is that his tormentor may have even worse things in mind.
The movie isn't for the squeamish. For instance, Oh Dae-su eats a rather large live octopus. And there a couple brief dental scenes that are so vicious they make the one in The Marathon Man look Disney-fied by comparison. Eventually though, we learn that sometimes the most powerful weapon isn't a gun or a sharp blade, but rather the ability to know the unknowable truth and to wield the emotions of another man in the palm of your hands. Oh Dae-su now lives a life filled with sorrow, misery, and regret. It is pitiful when he asks, "Even though I am no better than a beast, don't I too have the right to live?"
The third act of the movie is very powerful, but with a plot that becomes too elaborate and overwhelms. Some things just don't make sense, other things are pointless, and really the whole purpose for his imprisonment ends up being quite unjust and reeks of pretentiousness. By the end, I didn't care one way or the other what happened to Oh Dae-su or whether he finds his answers or gets his revenge. Oldboy has good intentions, and I can appreciate certain aspects of the filmmaking, but it just didn't work for me overall.
The Verdict: C+.
Michael Bentley 10:13 AM
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