I expect Oldboy to age rather quickly.

Rating: 6/10 (23 August 2007)

Oldboy is a film that is colourful and cinematic. It blends martial arts and action in with a plot in such a way, it's easy to just ogle at the special effects and stunts on show. Oldboy in terms of these stunts and effects is just another example of Asian film and what they do so well but this is an example that was unnecessary. Certainly, you have your 'art' films in the form of Hero and House of Flying Daggers that rely heavily on sublime aesthetical quality as well as stunts and hypnotically good music but with Oldboy, it's like it's merely 'House of Flying Daggers: for teens' and this is because it just tries to gross the audience out whilst use a lame revenge story to fill in the blanks.
There can be no denying that Oldboy tries to tread filmic ground that teens will have no idea even existed and this comes in the form of voyeurism. There is a scene in which a boy sucks the breast of a girl whilst another boy secretly watches from a nook in the wall  what's interesting here is that not only is the third party's view in point of view format (meaning that it's supposed to signify us watching) but half way through, the girl pulls out a mirror just so that she can watch her own reaction to the activity being carried out.
The film eventually starts out like any other revenge film  a guy is back on his feet after a stretch in a prison of some sort and goes after answers as to why he was there. The film tries to play cat and mouse with a mysterious cell phone: 'Whose calling?' and 'Why are they?' Yes, I wonder. He also manages to shack up with a female character after an encounter in a sushi bar that involves a particularly memorable scene involving an octopus that I knew nothing about until actually watching the film. This is where Oldboy begins its journey of a revenge film gone very, very wrong and I don't mean that as a negative statement, it's just that Oldboy is so audacious and over the top in its delivery of rather pointless content that when you think about it, it's difficult to get too excited.
Oldboy fails to suck you in  it just doesn't create an atmosphere. Despite its ratings and 'disturbing content', I actually found the film to be rather upbeat, almost like a comedy at times. There is the humble breaking of reality when the film pauses and a dotted line showing the intended line of attack a hammer will undergo once that character swings it is funny more than anything else. There is also an emphases on 'nothing dialogue'. When two people are talking down the phone about a formal school girl from years ago who was, from their memory, 'a total slut'; I was wondering if this was meant to be funny or if it was setting up a character for later on or whatever  I was left confused more than convinced. There's also plenty of room for ancient Chinese or Japanese or maybe even Korean proverbs that characters spout to one another. This is Oldboy again trying to be something it is not.
In regards to the 'gross, sensitive' content, I say "what content?" The guy eating the live octopus was surprising more than it was gross  I've eaten both octopus and squid before (obviously not live) but so what? The sex? Well, what about it? Try Basic Instinct or Boogie Nights or anything else of that variety. Again, it's for teens: 'Oh look, a sex scene(!)'. The 'graphic scenes of torture' involves someone having their teeth yanked out.....for about three seconds. Again, try watching work from Takeshi Miike or one of the Hostel films. Yes, Oldboy was violent what with its hammers and its snapped toothbrushes and its broken up shards of compact disc but so what? Violence is in most films these days. To conclude: Octopus scene = Surprising; Torture = Brief; Sex = Soft; Violence = Graphic so that's one out of four done to a graphic extent.
Oldboy failed to impress me in ways it has others as I just know there are better films out there. It tried to be something that it wasn't yet at the same time, has some redeeming features that keep it from being an out and out 'bad' film.