Oldboy

Rating: 7/10 (8 August 2010)

I heard quite a few things about this Korean film, that it was really grizzly, so I was expecting it to be to a horror film, and even though I was wrong on that part, I knew it was in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Basically Dae-su Oh (Min-sik Choi) is planning to see his daughter on the day of her birthday, after getting out of the police station completely drunk, but he disappears without trace. He has been imprisoned in a shabby cell with no explanation, meagre amounts of food, one range of clothes, one bed, one television, and gas that puts him to sleep every night, and he counts the time he is inside. He marks his time on his arm with tattoos, and he starts chipping his way through the wall, prepared to fall however many stories up he is, as long as he gets out. All of the sudden he wakes up coming out a trunk in a field, with fresh expensive clothes, money and a cellphone, and of course the knowledge that he was imprisoned for fifteen years, and now he wants revenge. He stops in a Japanese restaurant where he gets a suspicious phone call, and he meets chef Mido (Hye-jeong Kang), and they quickly have a strong attraction for each other. She wants to help Dae-su Oh find the ones who held in captivity, and the reason why, and he doesn't care how he gets to the truth or who gets hurt in the process. Eventually, after a few back and forth moment, Dae-su Oh concludes that it was Woo-jin Lee (Ji-tae Yu) responsible, but he tells a big secret when explaining the reasons. It wasn't just that it was saying a certain something to Mido, or that both of them were hypnotised to fall in love with each other, the reason they were was because they are already married! Also starring Dae-han Ji as No Joo-hwan, Dal-su Oh as Park Cheol-woong, Byeong-OK Kim as Mr. Han, Seung-Shin Lee as Yoo Hyung-ja and Jin-seo Yun as Lee Soo-ah. It is an interesting story, if a little vague in places, but for seeing moments like eating a live octopus, some fight scenes, and of course the teeth pulling scene (inspired by Marathon Man), it is certainly an action thriller to admire. Very good!