Darn good. Not perfect, but darn good.

Rating: 8/10 (5 March 2005)

It's funny looking through the reviews ... this movie seems to have a love/hate effect on people, and the people that hate it seem to have expected some sort of psychological masterwork that resonates truth and where every frame drips with brilliance. Maybe they were oversold and disappointed. Maybe some of the subjects covered in the film icked them out.
But (mild spoiler) unless you are a card-carrying professional hypnotist, I can't see what in this movie really set those frothers-at-the mouth off. I was told Oldboy was a good revenge flick. It's a good revenge flick. It's well shot, well acted, and has a plot that stands up to any other, well, revenge flick I've ever seen.
If you come to this movie expecting Orson Wellesian brilliance, you're gonna be disappointed. If you come, however, hoping for a stylish, well-crafted and engaging movie with a plot that makes about as much sense as Death Wish, I Spit on Your Grave, Ransom, and yadda yadda yadda, you're in for a treat.
Yeah, (mild spoiler again) the villain of the piece does seem to exhibit an annoying degree of omnipotence with surveillance technology, and hypnotism is used as a magic deux-ex-machina cure-all for the movie's plot woes. But jeez, people, lighten up. It's a revenge flick. Hell, the protagonist even LOOKS like a Korean Charles Bronson. I don't know how these fierce critics managed to miss that. Maybe they were busy sewing new leather patches onto the elbows of their tweed jackets.
8/10. It's a movie that has a job to do, does it excellently well, and goes home afterwards without cluttering up the joint. Toffee-nosed academics, stay away. This one's for us guys that like movies.