Good, but not outstanding

Rating: 6/10 (4 April 2005)

Oldboy, the Korean film so beloved of Tarantino has become something of a word of mouth cult film in the UK lately. As a film student myself, I've heard plenty of talk in seminars among other people on my course about this incredible movie that simply has to be seen but I wasn't swayed into watching it immediately because of one thing; it is director Chan-wook Park's follow up to Sympathy For Mr Vengeance. That previous film, while decent enough went on far too long and the end payoff was not quite worth it, yet despite this it was hyped to the heavens. So, settling down to watch Oldboy, I was a tad wary of the hype machine blinding viewers to the limitations of an otherwise unspectacular film.
Like Sympathy...Oldboy is another film concerned with the theme of revenge but on a first glance, seems a little more straightforward in it's approach. A man named Oh Dae-Su has been imprisoned in a room for 15 years and when released, sets about hunting down the people who did this to him and taking his revenge. On the surface, this seems like a simple revenge fantasy, but as the mystery of why he was subjected to his confinement unfurls, things become a little more complicated. Lee Woo-Jin, his nemesis is at first a cold, calculating man fixated on destroying Dae-Su, but once his reason for doing so becomes clear, its hard not to feel just a little sympathy for him. Furthermore, Park pulls plot twist after plot twist out of his film makers bag of tricks, but manages to keep it from becoming disorientating like in say, Identity and the pace of the film does not suffer for these quiet, analytical sequences.
However, what ultimately lets it down is that you get the feeling Park wasn't totally decided on what sort of film to make. Sympathy...for all its flaws had no misgivings about the fact it was a dark revenge tale, but Oldboy cannot seem to decide whether it is a action spectacle or a twisted, Oedipal tragedy. The infamous corridor fight sequence for instance, while fun, seems extremely out of place with the rest of the film and can we really believe that Dae-Su is such a great fighter, when all the training he has done has consisted of shadow boxing? And whoever was in charge of casting needs a grand old kick in the balls, as Dae-Su and Woo-Jin look to have about fifteen years of age difference between them, when they're supposed to be almost the same age.
An interesting and diverting film then, but hardly the nugget of cinematic gold that some have made it out to be. Also, be prepared for some rather gruesome moments. In one instance, the lead characters eats a live octopus, in another a man has his teeth snapped out with a hammer and there are numerous cases of torture and violence.