Violence isn't just skin deep

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2005)

Oldboy
At it's heart there lies a story of lost innocence and revenge. In this journey, director Chan-wook Park, travels a road where we question what lies after the righting of a supposed wrong, and the price that man will go to in order to maintain a sense of not knowing.
As has become the tradition with much reporting of graphic Southeast and East Asian cinema, a focus on violence and vivid imaginary overshadows the intricacies of narrative development. Of course it doesn't hold an eighteen rating for no reason, but for a moment lets forget some of the comic-book violence in which it excels.
Our story focuses on the 15-year imprisonment of Dae-su Oh (the man who gets along with others),confined to a dwelling that has all the apparent comforts of a modern South Korean apartment, but with the added bonus of piped hallucinogenic drugs making our protagonist more susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. Like our prisoner, for much of the film's duration we are limited to understanding why this event has taken place. In the meantime we are invited to embrace both the intentional and unintentional comic and tragic moments that follow as the ticking years wind the tension of retribution as we go from supposed breakout to the incidences of assumed chance meetings. Where true understanding of our journey is confined and complex questions asked in the last twenty minutes of the film, we are treated to flashes of inspirational camera work and effects, which do not in any way detract from the sense of this film. It would be easy to dismiss the violence as over the top, but as Dae-su Oh asks, does fifteen years of imagery training prepare one for the battles that will ensue. Along that way we are treated to a familiarity of claw hammer and human skull, which will have you both wincing and smirking at the same time. Fistfights that will make you take sharp intakes of breath as bone smacks bone in a not altogether unbelievable way.
Although not gripping from beginning to end, you do want to find out the reason for such a complex game of cat and mouse, which in essence is what the plot revolves around. Where it is easily possible to miss some of the bigger questions this film asks, if your able to maintain your interest and look beyond the surface violence, days later you can still find yourself asking what price you would be prepared to pay in order to forget or not know, and whether holding onto grudges of the past are really worth expending all that energy.