Man did that suck!!!!

Rating: 3/10 (16 December 2018)

I have been catching up with Korean films since I viewed I SAW THE DEVIL a couple of months ago. That film blew me away. It was a very violent revenge story. The film was uncomfortable to watch but the story was compelling and emotional, not just violent. I had read a lot of great things about OLDBOY. I didn't know much about the plot, but assumed that it would be good from all the great things I read about it.
After seeing this film I really don't get why it got such accolades. The basic outline of the story is that a man is put in an isolated room for 15 years in a cell that looks like a hotel room. He escapes the cell and begins a frantic search for truth and revenge. All of this sounds promising doesn't it? We it starts out very well. But as the film goes along it gets so convoluted and strange that it just lost me. The film stars Choi Min-sik as Oh Dae-su, the man that is imprisoned. When he gets out he is given a cell phone in which he gets a call from his captor. His captor refuses to tell him why he was imprisoned. What follows is a web of violent revenge and deception. His captor wants to make Oh Dae-su suffer. Again, the basic story could have been very involving but this film is done in such a slow meandering and overall weird way that I just didn't care for it. I won't give away much, but this film is so pretentious and self serious for it's own good. The violence in the film is very brutal, but without the emotional connection it just seems gratuitous. I've read reviews of this film hailing it as a masterpiece, I just dont get it? It is well filmed but so outrageous that it lost me. Not for the faint of heart. I won't see this again.