Wasn't my favorite movie, but worth watching.

Rating: 7/10 (28 January 2011)

Spoilers Ahoy: Going into this movie, I had high expectations. I have heard nothing but good things about Oldboy because, of that I might've set my bar a little bit to high. Coming out of the movie, I was a little bit disappointed. The one thing I couldn't stand about the movie was the dub. The dub was horrible, probably one of the worst dubs I have ever heard. The lip syncing didn't even match up half the time, the voices sounded off, and was all around pretty silly sounding. I feel that the dub kind of took away the seriousness of the movie. I was too busy laughing at the dub, I couldn't take anything in this movie seriously. I suggest watching it with subtitles and in the original language.
Another thing, I wasn't so fond of was the themes of incest. I usually love forbidden love stories. However, I just think it's a little weird that Dae-Su Oh got hypnotized so that he could continue to have sex with Mi-Do without knowing 'the awful truth'. If he really did love her, wouldn't he want her to know; so that he could confirm that this is really what she wants? I find it a bit selfish, but maybe that's what the movie was aiming for.
I was a big fan of the plot. I was very interested in the whole story, and I found myself, really wanting to know why Dae-Su ended up locked in that 'prison'. However, up until the end, I found the movie kind of confusing and hard to follow along with. To be honest, everybody kind of looked the same to me. Most of the women looked like Mi-Do, I'm not saying this to be racist, I myself being Asian. However, I feel that they should've picked some actresses, that looked different from each other. Or maybe, all the girls were Mi-Do. No idea. The horrible dub was kind of distracting.
Also, even though Dae-Su was supposed to be the protagonist, I didn't have any compassion towards him at all. I actually, found myself hating him a little bit. Maybe, it was because, I thought he was obnoxious (especially at the beginning, and end of the film)or maybe, it was because I didn't like his selfishness towards his daughter. I found myself synopsizing with the antagonist more. It was truly depressing, to watch him reach out for his sister when she killed herself, I probably even shed a tear or two. Additionally, did anyone else notice, that as the movie went on Dae-Su got noticeably weaker? First, he beats through a crowd of men, gets stabbed in the back, and is still beating them up. Next, he can barely even fight one man who looks like the size of my grandmother.
I was a little hesitant to watch this movie because, I heard that it was pretty violent. I usually, tend to steer away from extreme violent movies, as most of them are just 'movies that have extreme gore for no reason what so ever.' But, Oldboy wasn't that violent, a lot of the violence was off screen, and it didn't feel like one of those trashy 'movies with gore for no reason.' In my opinion, the violence was all in good taste and relevant to the plot.
Oldboy has its good features and its bad ones. Despite, that I do recommended that anyone who hasn't seen this film to go and see it. It's a good movie, when you want something interesting and a little bit different to watch.