"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone."

Rating: 10/10 (13 August 2017)

I finally re-watched this masterpiece from Park Chan-wook. When it comes to movies about revenge, I have never seen something as effectively shocking as this was. It made me remember why I was so shaken up by this movie the first time I watched it. Nothing can truly prepare you for the kind of deranged story that unfolds in front you.
The plot is about Oh Dae-su, a man who is kidnapped and confined to a prison where, with his only form of contact with the outside world being a television where you see someone of the worlds biggest events he missed out on. He also finds out that his wife is murdered and he is framed for it, leaving his daughter orphaned. He is mysteriously released by his captors after 15 years. He is left unaware who did it, why he did it or why he was released. While his life is consumed with revenge, he also falls in love with a young woman who works in a sushi restaurant. When it comes to extreme violence, this is one of those films where I found a lot of it deeply affecting to the point where I was just completely taken out of my comfort zone the first time I watched it. It is razor sharp in terms of its storytelling and it feels so rich because for all the twisted insanity that involves in front of you, it feels impactful in all the right ways. All of the characters, no matter who they are feel like their motivations are handled properly. Oldboy becomes a better movie with every scene, because every plot point that's revealed to you, it is just consistently riveting and I was noticing a few subtle new things on repeat viewings.
All of the performances are superb in this and I feel I would have to spoil things if I was talking about everyone, however I will say that I absolutely adored Choi Min-Sik's performance as Oh Dae-su. Everything is revealed to you from his perspective and everything about his performance feels real and believable. He has that wonderful mix where he is just completely deranged and bad ass, while also having down-to-earth vulnerabilities and weaknesses and this makes him easy to connect with as a viewer. It makes everything revealed to you feel so much more meaningful.
His fight scenes.... wow! Just wow! How can something so messed up look so beautiful? The famous hallway scene one of best fight scenes I have ever seen put to film and it is just staggering to me how perfect it looks. It's not so much the martial arts that looks impressive, it's the fact that the film isn't afraid to make the fighting a little raw and sloppy at times which makes for a visceral and painful looking scene. Seeing Oh Dae-su with a switchblade stuck in his back for most of the scene just has me grimacing. And to top of that it is filmed in a beautiful extended long tracking shot. As badass as he is in this film Choi Min-Sik also gives a wonderful physical performance and he looks like he is in pain.... a lot. He sells a character who only has one thing left to fight for in his life and that is revenge and you feel his desperation for it.
The music in this film is just beautiful. The use of Vivaldi's 4 Seasons to someone's teeth getting pulled is so indescribably twisted, I just love it! That piece will probably haunt me whenever I go to the dentist now. The rest of the soundtrack is so beautiful it almost brings me to tears listening to it by itself. Jo Yeoung- wook and Shim Hyun-Jung's classical score feels very contrasting to the visuals, and just feels so tragic and melancholic. The last track called The Last Waltz, is one of the most beautiful pieces in the film and just has me deep in thought as I'm meditating and processing everything that has just happened in the film.
I also appreciate how you get a few darkly funny moments in there as well. There's one scene early on, while Oh Dae-su is still held prisoner, where he decides to write a list of people who he think might be motivated enough to do something like that to him and he ends up filling up an entire journal of it. There's a few little moments like that where you see humour like that just sprinkled in and I love that. I simply have to see more films from Park Chan-wook, because in my opinion he is one of the best filmmakers of all time. It's both beautiful and brutal to watch at the same and it's just one of those films that held my attention from start to finish. It is such a riveting experience, that the 2 hours just fly by and it's shocking ending makes the film linger on long after it's over. It's a great story where you end up buying into every characters motivations no matter how you look at it and that's what makes Oldboy a truly special experience. I loved every minute of this.