Stylish, Violent but Empty

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2005)

Oldboy (2003) is the latest, and possibly most critically acclaimed, of a series of films to come out of Asia, which are best described as "Extreme". They are all very slick, stylish, violent and taboo-breaking to an almost self-conscious level. In my experience they are also all largely unsatisfying at anything other than an aesthetic level.
In terms of sensation and brutal violence such films as Takashi Miike's cartoon-like Ichii the Killer (2001) or the brilliant Audition (1999) are unsurpassed by any Western cinema. Oldboy comes close with much tooth-pulling, hammer battering, tongue cutting and live octopus eating, but nothing which quite matches the sadistic, absurd violence in Miike's films.
It is easy to see why Oldboy won many people over, including Tarantino at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, as it is an effortlessly slick, stylish film with many technically accomplished scenes and flashes of CGI-enhanced imagery. Unfortunately, it's narrative is far less satisfying, and no amount of violence or visual trickery can disguise this fact. At best, the motivation for Oh Dae-Su's 15 year imprisonment is coherent, but taken to unbelievable psychopathic extremes. As in many of these extreme Asian films, the film provokes a visceral reaction, but it is narratively, and consequently emotionally, hollow. Worth seeing for fans of the genre, though if you're looking only for violence and gore there are many more Asian films which surpass this.