Pretty good but slightly overrated

Rating: 7/10 (10 November 2005)

Before seeing Oldboy, I had heard a lot of good things about it. Many of my friends loved it and many respectable critics also praised the movie. The fact that it won prestigious awards from numerous festivals doesn't hurt either. However, this film seems to be the kind of "hate it or love it" type of film. Even in IMDb.com, many people believed this is one of the greatest films coming out of Korean while others said it sucks.
For me, after seeing it, I feel that it is a pretty good movie, visually stunning with sharp script and dialogs. All the actors did good jobs on their parts. Choi Min-Sik gave us a good performance as Dae-Su and so did Yu Ji-tae as Woo-Jin. The chemistry between these two is so good that we can feel the intense between them. However, as smart as the script is, the film suffers from the over-dramatized ending, typical for Korean movies (IMHO only). It seems like after a superb first 90 minutes of the film or so, the director tried too hard to impress us with the ending. The last scene between Dae-Su and Woo-Jin is totally too intentional and over-dramatic; I was disgusted. For me, it is sad because the film, a little after its first half, was on its way to be the best movie from Korean in my list. The ending, however, ruined it all; it's like after eating half a bowl of delicious soup, you find out that there is a pubic hair in it.
Anyway, it's not a bad movie, by all means. Kudos to Choi Min-Sik for his great performance in the first half of the film; he really put a lot of effort to it. Park Chan-Wook, the director, is, well, still Park Chan-Wook; great potential but never fully materialize his greatness. I'll look forward to his next film if he can really make it next time.