a revenge picture that isn't very pretty, and loves it that way

Rating: 10/10 (2 February 2006)

Oldboy was a film I saw twice in the theater, in New York City (the second time not totally intentional, just the only thing playing worth seeing), and saw again recently. I'm still struck on how balls-to-the-wall director Chanwook Park goes with his story. It's actually not a bad story, but it needs a certain push and originality in drive to make it work. For some this will be overkill, and it's not without an argument. The film is violent, though perhaps not on the level of Fukasaku or Miike's films. It's disturbing, but in a way that hits deep by way of raw emotions that can only come out of East Asian cinema. And it has a level of drama that's staggering, maybe for some a little far-fetched. But it's also a good lot of the time a bitingly funny film, loaded with attitude to match its style, but with a heart as well.
The small low-down on the story: Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-Sik in a towering performance worthy of Charles Bronson or Harvey Keitel or both) is nabbed un-wittingly and thrown into a prison. We follow him along in his long stint, seeming forever, until he suddenly gets 'released' into the open. Now it's time for revenge, but is the question of the truth, of the why, even more crucial than actually getting payback? This becomes the main dramatic pull of Oldboy, but it's not just a kind of ultra-violent fight and action filled epic saga. It's also a love story, so to speak, and a film about the mistakes of youth. The antagonist of the story, Lee Woo-Jin (Yu Ji-Tae in what is one of the most absorbing and calmly demented performances in recent memory), becomes a very threatening, dark presence in the film, omnipresent a lot of the time, like a devil watching over it's subject. And when it comes to the climax, there is a level of Greek tragedy that's so strong, it had a good few in the theater I saw the film clinging tenaciously to their seats.
The story, admittedly, is relatively thin when one thinks about it, and if a director wanted to pull a Howard Hawks and cut past all of the modern aesthetic the film would be a third less in length. But the twisted pleasure of watching a film like Oldboy unfold is in the manipulation of the style, how Park and his director of photography Jeong Jeong-hung give the film an indie wham-bang zeal while at the same time following no rules. This is demonstrated in many tense scenes, but the memorable ones include at least a few key moments in Oh Dae-Su's prison cell, and particularly the infamous long-shot as the fight breaks out in the prison hallway. Seeing a scene like this may or may not draw some viewers down the line right away; how much can you take seeing a scene lasting 3 or 4 or more minutes of just brutal beating, choreographed to a full intensity? As with the film in general, it's a not-too guilty pleasure for genre fans, and for others they might watch it and think 'eh'.
But it is also in the people, in the characters that creates a heightened pitch in Oldboy. It's like a filmed graphic novel in some ways, but dealing with characters who (possible exceptions being Lee Woo Jin and some of his 'posse') are not part of a criminal underworld, and our main hero is turned inside out, into what he calls as himself a 'monster' (watch for the reference to Frankenstein on TV, by the way). So, when it comes time for this harsh, piercing revelation scene in the high tower Lee occupies, it leads to some devastating stuff. Like the darkest bits out of Sophocles, Park's characters are practically doomed by fate, and it's not much of a picnic for them getting there. But for the audience, it's created as a post-modern stew. Oldboy is rough, taut, and in spurts quite visionary.