More than a simple movie, a fascinating phenomenon

Rating: 5/10 (25 January 2006)

"Oldboy" is at best an average movie, at worst a crashing pretentious bore. Overall, it isn't that execrable, but it's barely remarkable in any way either - if not in poor taste and amateuristic cinematography.
However, as a broader cultural phenomenon Oldboy is at least as fascinating as the movie is per se. There is some obscure and, to a certain extent, amusing cult created around this thankfully forgettable thingy. Like a fanatic's mantra, the same meaningless adjectives and superlatives ("the best fight scene ever" etc.) are being ceaselessly thrown at an ignorant audience, as if repeating something untrue ad nauseam would make it true in the end. It doesn't.
Among other equally thoughtless thoughts, one can read that those who aren't convinced by this regurgitated piece of ridiculous Hollywoodiana - repackaged as a "worthy" ambassador of Asian cinema (ha-ha!) - would be culturally narrow-minded or unused with subtitles in movies! Oh yeah, the good old-fashioned P.C. One can call American bad movies bad movies, but one should not call horrible foreign movies bad foreign movies.
Reality check: it is precisely those with a background in foreign cinema that had any interest in the awfully over-hyped "Oldboy" to begin with. As in those who have already seen hundreds of foreign movies and for whom subtitles are no problem at all. The problem with Oldboy is not its being a foreign movie, but its being a bad movie for any standards, be it subtitled or dubbed, Korean or American, Asian or Western, yin or yang, theatrical edition or director's cut (tongue pun, if any, unintended). There's nothing remotely redeemable about this epitome of mediocrity of a movie, and one should only thank the educated IMDb contributors for the public service they offered in warning audiences about the inextricable mess they were about to be getting into.