Overrated indeed.

Rating: 3/10 (22 November 2005)

** contains spoilers ** We can call formulaic a movie which develops according to a well-established, consecrated and successful formula and obey some kind of narrative pattern. It can be a good rendering or version of the established formula or a bad one. In either case, it lacks originality. The logical corollary is that any formula, no matter how brilliant and awe-inspiring it may be, is prone to be depleted sooner or later. When you sit through a movie and you find it disturbingly boring without knowing the reason, it may well be the case that you've seen it before  one, twice or a dozen times. That's exactly the problem with 'oldboy': from Freud's works and Kafka's Process to Angel Heart, Memento or Spider, we've already seen or read way too many stories about someone who's trapped in a mysterious plot without knowing why, forgets a good deal about his life and then goes to hell in order to discover what's going on with him  just to find out in the end that the big secret lies in his own past, usually a dirty or tormented past which has been done away with by the character's harried mind. What changes from a movie to another - apart from the camera work and all the formal qualities which a movie may or not possess  is the past dirtiness: a murder, a rape, an incestuous relationship. You name it. I'm tired of it. ;-)