Korean film that was good but not quite what I expected

Rating: 7/10 (28 November 2015)

Oh wow what a tough time I have had trying to compose my thoughts about this, a movie by many considered a modern masterpiece but to me it was although a good movie, nowhere near perfect. So much has been said about this movie and much I expected that I felt let down and it's kind of annoying because this is actually more than OK as a film but because it is so highly regarded by some you expect this to be like some magical ride into a movie. It's basically pretty crazy and has its fair share of violence too, it never shies from trying to shock the viewer and by the end you might either feel sick or have become desensitised.
The story is all about a man by the name of Oh Dae-su who is taken out of nowhere from the street and put into a jail of sorts for 15 years, being gassed and injected with a strange substance continuously. The plot then progresses to Oh Dae-su being released and that sets into motion his quest to find out who did this to him and also any details of his daughter. The movie is really a study of the mind in a sense and tries extremely hard to make you feel grossed out but in a way where it just seems to fit in with the way the movie is going, many other movies I could feel slightly taken aback by teeth pulling, but here it feels common place.
Park Chan-wook directs and does a pretty good job really as he mixes dark style elements with humour of which I feel stands out the most. The opening is truly the great part of this and it makes you interested from the start, the middle starts to loosen its grip in my opinion though and although right at the end it starts to feel alright again, for the most part the second half it is kind of dull and meaningless things are put in. I do feel this movie has very little to it as well with it really feeling like an action movie that has a bit more dramatic effect than others maybe out there but you could also say about the strange style in which this is played out. Parts can feel a little like style over substance and sometimes the look of the movie seems to be the thing trying to move the movie when really it should be interesting plot lines.
Choi Min-sik is the man who plays Oh Dae-su and he is really good actually, mixing crazy with true emotion and really he makes the role completely his own. No other character quite gets the all round mental analysis that Dae-su gets but people like Mi-do (Kang Hye- jung) and Lee Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae) come pretty close to getting a full blown brain scan, the whole movie really tries to dig deep into the characters and reveals many things about them and the way they feel about things going on the story as it progresses.
So all in all Oldboy really is a movie that is memorable but for me not it's skill as a movie, but in what it contains. I wasn't actually that grossed out throughout and although some scenes look pretty bad, the film is never that squeamish you shouldn't watch this. Of course this movie will also be remembered for its crazy octopus scene, the hallway fight, the general weirdness of the prison and of course the ending which is so out of nowhere in terms of the way you think this is going that it feels like some sort of strange movie added on to this already weird film.