Old Boy. Why this is a very decent film.

Rating: Null/10 (23 May 2006)

Old Boy. Why this is a very decent film. For those people who like films and have a sense of theatrical and cinematographic history. If you are familiar with the concept of "tragedy" as it has evolved from the ancient Greeks: Euripedes, Aeschylus et al, through Shakespeare and the Renaissance tragedians and, in more modern times, Beckett, Brecht etc... then you will know that as far as contemporary mainstream Western cinema in concerned, this genre is all but dead. However, this is not the case in the Far East, as Old Boy shows. This film explores the great tragic grand narratives but with the inclusion of a Kafkaesque twist. If you are not moved it is because you do not feel. This film is, by degrees: absurd, comic, tragic. Despite its eastern heritage there are touches of The Revenger's Tragedy and other plays that would be spoilers to mention. This is not a film where violence is the central tenet. Violence arises out of the circumstances in which the main character finds himself. Like the best of ancient Greek tragedy it shows us much about the human condition and how we are to live. Watch it - imagine if you had to live it.