What passes for "great cinema" these days . . .

Rating: 5/10 (15 March 2005)

I have watched this movie with great hopes. I am a movie buff, I love Italian cinema - Fellini, Antonioni, Rosselini, de Sica -, but I'm also open to many other cultures with their works. As I really LOVE Korean food, I hoped I could say the same about the movie hailed as the Second Coming in some circles. It wasn't meant to be, so please spare me the senseless innuendos about anybody calling this bad movie a bad movie being anti-Asian or whatever. I am anti-being-robbed-of-my-hard-earned-money, yes.
Yes, I can see how for somebody ready to believe that an MTV video is the greatest (or the "coolest") music they've ever heard Oldboy can seem a "masterpiece". But that's really stretching the latter term far beyond a benevolent attitude toward pop culture, more likely toward a mindless "anything goes" attitude.
By the way, without giving any spoilers, the plot is not "original", "stunning", or whichever other inapt superlatives the easy-to-please crowd bestowed upon this half-wit of a movie. It's at most an inflation of unbelievable and at times downright stupid twists which make no sense and bring no elation, cathartic or otherwise, in the viewer doomed to be submitted to this "masterpiece". Run for your life.