Looks impressive, but hammer on it and you'll find it's hollow.

Rating: 6/10 (27 July 2007)

This is a case of a movie where the director has lavished too much attention, too impressive cinematography, on a story that can't support it. Chan-Wook Park starts with an almost Hitchcock-like tale of a man abducted and held against his will by an enemy he could not see. It is rather moving to see his anger, confusion, and frustration come to the surface. Sometimes the intensity is broken by dark humor, the sort of comic "relief" that also serves to ratchet up the tension. And the sense of composition and style is first rate. It seems like it's sometimes a cross between Hitchcock and the Wachowski Brothers.
But they you start to see loose threads appear, and instead of tying them up, the climax just makes everything unravel. We know that the hero, Oh Dae-Su, has been the victim of some elaborate plot for revenge or sadism. But then we find out just how elaborate it is, how many things the villain would have had to have under his thumb to make them not be coincidences, how many times Oh Dae-Su had to make the wrong choice, and just as importantly, how many times he had to escape getting killed by dozens of thugs at the wrong moment. At this point, the movie stops being an assault on our sensibilities, and turns into an assault on the willing suspension of disbelief. There's a fine line between shock and schlock, the sort of violence that produces horror and the sort of violence that is so unbelievable it can only produce numbness or laughter. I can appreciate both, but Oldboy crosses the line into schlock at the end - and seemingly doesn't realize it. "Laugh, and the world laughs with you?" Maybe not, in this case...
When Hitchcock went for shocking, he could leave you thinking that the world is twisted and sick. Chan-Wook Park only succeeds in leaving you thinking his own imagination is twisted and sick. Not really the same sort of shock.