Oh Boy!

Rating: 10/10 (14 March 2019)

"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone."
Never have truer words been said. And I agree with the second part even more. This is a film where the hero and the villain are both lonely individuals because they're in a grieving process. But you can't be truly heroic or villainous when you're that pathetic, so "Old Boy" is less the tale of an upcoming good-vs-evil confrontation than the journey of a man who was stolen part of his life and had the remains to give it the only possible meaning: knowledge first, then revenge.
I won't spoil the twist, one brilliant paradigm the film provides is that sometimes it's not about looking for the right answers but asking the right questions. But I'm talking in abstractions, let's just get into reviewing mode. Oh-Daeh Su is a man we first see drunk in a police station, he missed his daughter's birthday and is ready to go home when he's suddenly kidnapped and jailed in an apartment where he's given food, clean laundry and a TV as his only connection to the world, like Peter Sellers' character in "Being There".
TV teaches him one thing or two when the rest of the experience hardens him. At that moment we're hooked already, we want to see his escape and want to know what this average-looking man ever did to deserve this? The way he "gets off" is an indicator that the film isn't exactly trying to match our expectations. Indeed, it's not as simple because it's much simpler than we'd have anticipated, he's released and finds himself with new clothes, a cellphone, and time to readapt to the city he left.
There's even a scene that echoes "Being There" where he's confronted to street thugs, Oh Daeh-Su says "Can 10 years' worth of imaginary training... be put to use?" Apparently it can, and his fifteen years of isolation improved his physical skills as much as they damaged the social ones. Yet, everything feels too convenient, too weird, even in a restaurant, a young girl named Mido seems to grow an infatuation on him... even after he did the grossest thing ever; eating a live octopus! Is the film falling in the romance trap? Wait till the end, that's not the right question to ask.
Now why did he eat the animal? That's a question. "To feel something alive in his mouth after having been deprived from life" seems like an organic answer, remember that Oh Daeh-Su has been totally desensitized from life and naturally pain, taking the life out of an animal or a human being would make him feel alive again as if he had sucked the juice of life to feel something again.
The "octopus" scene sets our mind to the most gruesome parts where Oh Daeh-Su tracks down his captors until he finds his former warden and pulls seven teeth out before getting the names. All the discretion shots in the world can't distract from disturbing "Marathon Man" vibes but here again, it's not just about shocking for the kicks. When Oh Daeh-Su pulls off the tooth, believe it or not, he's the one suffering, he's the one who has surrendered to his bestial nature to commit atrocities he never thought he could.
As he says: "Even though I'm no more than a monster - don't I, too, have the right to live?" And living, as far as he's concerned, is looking for the answers, there's something worse than suffering which is suffering for no reason, this could apply for violence in films, it can only work if there's a reason. So for a film so inclined to disturbing acts of violence, it's interesting that its central theme is knowledge.
The film puts us in the mind of someone who wants to know but maybe the truths it's ready to reveal would make his torment worse, his life more hellish, but he's willing to take the risk... this is why you can't judge the film without considering its antagonist. Woo Jin-Lee is everything Oh Daeh-Su is not, he's handsome (very actually), rich, confident and he defines himself as a scholar in Oh Daeh-Su. So we have the man who wants to know and the scholar.
And as the cat-and-mouse chase goes on and the plot gets thicker, Woo Jin-Lee's cool and detached demeanor fades out to unveil as tragic depths as Oh Daeh-Su did so we understand that they were the perfect match to each other until the climactic face-off. And like Bill in "Kill Bill", it's not just black and white morality. I know, you could see a "Kill Bill" allusion coming, there are so many parallels to draw between the two films and it's a fitting coincidence that QT was the Cannes Festival and gave the film its Grand Prize, but "Old Boy" flies high miles above American Cinema.
Indeed, calling it a revenge story, an action film or a psychological thriller wouldn't give you one tenth of the idea. American movies have proven that a good editing, a compelling story and shocking value are integral to a film's success but I blame them for having given me the wrong idea about that South Korean's gem, perhaps one of the most immoral and amoral movies I've ever seen, it's just disturbing, disgusting and graphic on levels rarely reached by American cinema (Tarantino included)... on the surface.
Indeed, it's impossible to give "Old Boy" a negative review. The reason is simple, the film is amoral but it's a masterpiece of amorality, it embraces it with a sort of morbid enthusiasm whose credibility depends on its sincerity, whoever uses violence can atone with it. Yes, the film is extreme but if it wasn't, we would feel either manipulated or cheated and the film might show revenge as something necessary but never satisfactory!