"Even though I am worse than a beast, don't I have the right to live?"

Rating: 10/10 (12 April 2014)

One of the many metaphorical quotes featured in Park Chan-wook's haunting masterpiece. I'm not entirely sure if it is correctly quoted word-for-word, but you get the idea.
Oh Dae-Su, the protagonist, is a spiteful drunk when he is first introduced to the viewer. He is a man who is so far gone that we cannot feel any significant shred of sympathy for him. One night he is kidnapped after missing his young daughter's birthday due to his drunkenness and is confined in a shabby motel-like prison. After fifteen years he is released and is given less than a week to discover why he was imprisoned.
During his, "motel stay" as I will call it, Dae-Su slowly re-evaluates his life. He begins keeping a journal of sorts, comprised of emotional letters to his daughter. He acknowledges his wrongdoings and becomes a wiser man, allowing us the audience to begin to empathize with him and giving meaning to aforementioned metaphor. By the time he is released, he has become a nobler and stronger man, driven intensely by revenge, and is now a character whom we can fully understand and identify.
Another metaphor used in this film is, "be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they both sink equally". I believe that, essentially, this means that what goes around comes around. At one point in the film, it is revealed that Dae-Su and Woo-Jin Lee, the antagonist and the culprit behind Dae-Su's imprisonment, attended the same high school as teens and that Dae-Su discovered a secret about Woo-Jin and then committed an act that left him with deep emotional scars and greatly impacted his life. During the final confrontation between Dae-Su and Woo-Jin, the latter reveals that Dae-Su's capture and release was carefully and precisely orchestrated so that an event would later occur with him in the same vein as Woo-Jin's dark secret. By doing this, Woo-Jin has gained the upper hand and has acquired an, "eye for an eye".
Overall, I think that this is a truly excellent and memorable film. The underlying themes of redemption and karma hit hard and left a great impact on me as a cinemaphile. Be warned, although this film is not graphically violent, it is still brutal and what is implied off screen is usually quite disturbing. That being said, this film is not to be missed. This is one of my top ten favorite films of all time.