This movie is.....different....

Rating: 9/10 (1 February 2009)

I don't even know where to begin on this most original movie.
What I like about foreign films in general is that they tend to stay away from mainstream ideas and this Korean hit is no exception.
In an overview of this movie, "Oldboy" is an artistic teaser of martial arts mixed with solid yet hysterical acting sequences. "Oldboy" starts out a little choppy as if direction was experimenting with acting and editing "takes" on film, but I soon adjusted to the style early on though there were a few confusing and erroneous scenes that still leaves me wondering at this moment.
It is all about this normal guy named Daesu Oh, who gets imprisoned in an apartment for 15 years and he winds up nearly insane in the process. He is somehow let loose into the changed society by mysterious means and is given a task to find out why he was held captive for all that time by an unknown voice in a cell phone he was given. He meets up with this younger lady whom has a mysterious connection to his recent captors, and soon after he unravels this huge mystery through various fights and interrogations.
The choreography in one of the fight scenes was rather entertaining to watch, where our protagonist in the story takes on a dozen or so henchmen with baseball bats and beats them all up even with a knife lodged into his back.
The role of the borderline insane Daesu Oh is a very complex one and his character is well defined and detailed. He is probably one of my favorite protagonists in recent memory. Direction properly detailed a psychological character as someone imprisoned for 15 years without any outside contact. I liked that part where he inhaled that squid alive. That was an example of a truly tormented soul.
The story left a couple plot holes in it, like the mystery of the hypnotherapist. I also didn't understand why would anyone want to go through the trouble of imprisoning Daesu Oh and releasing him just to play games with him. But the story is still original and I hope the Western world doesn't try to mock this story by creating a remake like they did on "Quarantine" and what they are about to do on "Let the Right One in"
Overall, this gives me a good impression of what Korean film has to offer. This is something different and I recommend to watch this at least once.