Revenge + x = Old Boy

Rating: Null/10 (17 October 2004)

Spoilers Warning !!!  comments below are ONLY for the eyes of those who have seen the movie
Let's start with the story line. The hook: Why would any one want to imprison OH Dae-su for 15 years? The twist: The 15 years of imprisonment is itself not the revenge, but only the necessary prerequisite to the real revenge. There are actually a couple of clues which we might have noticed had we not been so overwhelmed by the powerful visual images. The 'prison' in which Oh has been kept is reasonably decent, with even a television to keep the prisoner occupied and informed of what's happening in the outside world. It tells us that the captor wants to keep Oh in reasonable shape for the release. If Oh had killed himself in prison, or come out a completely irreparable wreck, the revenge would not have been as sweet. The other clue is just the length of time of the imprisonment. Quite obviously, the captor is waiting for something to happen, and 'something' this takes 15 years. Had we time to think, it would not be too difficult to guess.
Even if you had not read or heard anything about the movie before watching it, you would know right from the start that it's about revenge. The twist, which comes about mid-way through the movie, is that the hunter is in fact the hunted. As Oh is furiously seeking revenge, the revenge ON HIM is far from being over. The other variable in the formula in my summary line, represented by an 'x' in the summary line, is incest.
If there is such a thing as man-made poetic justice in revenge, you'll be hard pressed to find one as perfect as that in Old Boy. LEE Woo-jin's tragedy is caused by Oh's telling of the former's incest. This drove Lee's sister to suicide, resulting in Lee's gnawing hatred for Oh. So deep is the hatred that Lee waited 15 years for Oh's daughter to grow up so that he could pay back in kind, engineering incest between Lee and his daughter. While comments in IMDb almost unanimously praised the ingenious plot, there is one dissenting voice which, viewed objectively, make some sense. Somewhat simplified, this argument is that after the 15 years' ordeal, Oh has emerged hardened and unconventional, and therefore should not be as devastatingly vulnerable to the final revelation. One could of course argue that the vulnerability is rooted in Oh's absolute devotion to his daughter. An interesting debate, this is.
With hindsight, I could also suggest a further twist: Mi-do need not really be Oh's daughter. In fact it makes more sense that she is not. Why would Lee need to go through all the trouble? Why not simply kill the daughter together with the mother, but make sure that the body of the daughter is not found so that she'll be just mysteriously missing? Find any girl to play the role 15 years later and Oh wouldn't be any wiser. Director PARK Chan-wook would undoubtedly have thought of this too, and could easily counter it by introducing something like a birthmark for identification. But he didn't bother because too much detail would take away from the brutal, raw impact of the revelation. Too much nitpicking of the plot often means missing the point entirely.
So much for the story line, and now to the motion picture. It's generally agreed that director Park painstakingly planned and executed every shot, every sequence. While the focus has been on the hard brutality, there is actually also quiet subtlety, kind of both Yang and Yin, in Old Boy. Of the plenty of examples of the former (Yang), the one almost everybody talks about is the 'hammer' scene. Within this long, drawn-out brawl, which incidentally is just as rich in black humor as is hard-hitting violence, the most ingenious is the scene showing a horizontal assemblage of the goons on the left and the solitary defiance of Oh on the right of the screen. I don't remember seeing anything so wickedly clever before. As to the Yin elements, consider the scene in the hidden attic of the high school, in which the two high school kids explore and tease each other in a sexual overture. Quite unlike the steaming sexual scene between Oh and Mi-do, this one is tantalizingly erotic.
I've only seen one other film directed by Park, Joint Security Area (or 'JSA') (2000), an excellent piece of work, powerful, mainstream. It seems that pursuing the theme of vengeance in his movie-making, Park has embarked into cult films, with obvious successes as Old Boy which brought home Grand Prix from Cannes. I first saw Choi Min-sik (playing Oh) in a supporting role in Korean spy thriller Swiri (or Shiri) (1999), my first ever Korean movie. Then, he really impressed me with Happy End (1999), in which he teams up with whom I think is still Korea's best actress, Jeon Do-yeon. Quite opposite to the explosive Oh in Old Boy, the character portrayed by Choi in Happy End is introvert and subdued, but driven to extreme acts by his wife's infidelity. Two different role: same excellence.
I can fully understand why Old Boy won the Grand Prix in Cannes, for its all round artistic achievement, but what it fails to give me is the feeling of sublime elation I get after watching a film like Ikiru.