There's no halves with Oldboy

Rating: 10/10 (28 October 2006)

Wow! There's no halves with Oldboy. I haven't seen so many negative reviews for a film so highly regarded by many others. Perhaps its the violence, which is understandable because it can be gratuitous and would make anyone cringe. Major plot holes have been pointed out by others. I would tend to agree with that too. The plot is indeed derivative - the basic Count of Monte Cristo premise has been rehashed before for countless TV shows. Yet despite all these valid criticism's (all of which I agree with), I think Oldboy only falls a notch short of excellent.
The magic is in the execution. The script is quite complex and the editing, camera-work do it full justice. In particular, the entire school sequence and the single-take corridor fight are brilliant.
The plot has Oh Dae-Su, married with one young daughter, kidnapped and imprisoned in a comfortable room for 15 years. When he is released, he does not realise, despite being told that he has merely moved to a larger prison. Hell-bent on revenge, it takes him the rest of the movie to realise that he was better off in prison.
Themes in this movie likely to offend include attempted rape, murder, torture, incest and eating a live baby octopus.