This is the best i have seen in a very long time...

Rating: 10/10 (22 May 2004)

The story comes from a Japanese comic book of the same name, in which an ordinary family man is suddenly kidnapped and placed in a cell dressed up as a hotel room.
Given no explanation for his confinement or the murder of his wife, Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) spends the next 15 years alone, weaving in and out of hallucinatory states with only a television to keep him company.
Dark and moody like a nightmare waiting to occur, these moments in the hotel room are some of the best in the film. The scenes, in which Park uses a collage of images to set the mood, play out like a Kafka story, with Oh unsuccessfully trying to come up with a rational reason for his plight.
An expert on personifying tragedy, Choi is at his angst-filled best portraying a man on the edge of madness. Oh is determined to one day find a way out of his cell and exact revenge on those responsible.
Between bouts of madness, he trains himself in the art of fighting, punching the walls until thick calluses envelop his knuckles.
Unfortunately, when Oh finally escapes and begins tracking down his enemy (Yoo Ji-tae), the film gets to feel a bit muddled. Perhaps it's a matter of having too much of a good thing, because the combination of the various elements doesn't completely add up.
Like different volumes in a comic book, there's something a bit stilted about the transitions and the resulting finale.
10 out 10 DVDStockholm