What a Film Experience!!! SPOILERS!!!!!

Rating: 9/10 (9 November 2016)

SPOILERS!!!!! Small elements of the ending revealed! DO NOT READ if you don't want to KNOW ANY KNOWLEDGE OF THE ENDING!
I'd heard all about Oldboy for many years now and had always wished to see it, but due to one circumstance or another, never did. Finally, I'd managed to get my hands on a copy and deliberately put aside some time to see it... Oh, boy, am I glad I did!
Oldboy is quite simply a marvellous film of the highest order. Nearly everything about it is perfect. The acting by the whole cast, but especially by the main actor, is incredible gritty and realistic, almost to the point of it being disturbing to watch. The direction and choreographed fight scenes are brilliant, really successfully drawing you in and getting you entangled up with pain and suffering being caused. The technical side of editing, cinematography, art direction and sound design are pristine pin-pointed to perfection. There are no unnecessary over-usages, yet the creative team know the limit of how much to exaggerate to allow you to be swept up in the violence, seedy environments and unpleasant situations.
Story wise, the film is extremely well plotted, building you up with tension and anticipation to the very, very, VERY edge of your seat and suddenly knocking you off your feet with an amazing twister shock ending. I would have to say only one element of the ending, the supposed hypnotising of the characters to make them fall in love, felt far too contrived for the hard-hitting, OTT reality that has been established within the film. And that for me at least has knocked a star off because otherwise I would be giving it a great big TEN.
Oldboy has quite the reputation of being a violent film. Rightly so in many places, but if you come into this expecting non-stop, fast-paced fights and gore, you might be disappointed. Most assuredly, there are some violent scenes â€“ extremely violent in some cases â€“ but the quick, bloody pace that is set up early on quickly seems to peter out and instead is replaced with a story that is riddled with themes and questions. It's no less enticing and gripping, but just don't go in viewing this film as a 2-D foreign language revenge flick that makes use of conventions. In fact, it seems that Oldboy has created as well as redefined codes and conventions that have influenced a great number of the violent Hollywood films that have come out since Oldboy, a film probably no one thought would influence world cinema in such a massive way.
Let Oldboy sink into you, absorb the disturbing atmosphere, go along with the extremely dark comedy that arises, revel in the violence and do yourself a favour by not reading anything further about the ending if you haven't seen it already.