Didn't like it much at all

Rating: Null/10 (24 April 2005)

Armond White of the NY Press has called it a "virtuosic stupid movie". I think that's exactly right.
Certainly the movie looks fantastic. I liked the surrealistic touches. I think the director has a real imaginative way of capturing the process of memory -- there's an extended flashback about 3/4 way through which I think is as well conceived and shot as anything I've seen. The acting is standout. Hell, I even liked the score.
But the movie almost aggressively makes no sense.
SPOILERS Leave aside for a moment the obvious plot holes, large and small -- although it's worth noting that there's a whole lot of them. Leave aside the contrivances, too: the endless special gadgets the bad guy comes up with just when he needs them, the rather magical view of hypnosis, Dae-Su's magical new abilities, the seeming omnipotence of the badguy. Let's assume all this is beside the point, and that we're supposed to take the movie more or less symbolically ala FIGHT CLUB (probably the closest reference).
The movie doesn't make any sense thematically, either. What's it really about? The virtue of keeping your mouth shut? The movie seems to suggest that the bad guy's sexual relationship with his sister is just fine, the problem seems to be Dae-Su's big mouth. The movie rather laboriously teaches this: the sister kills herself because of the rumors which somehow the sister believes to be true (?); Dae-Su becomes convinced that he was, in fact, at fault; Dae-Su cuts his own tongue out; Dae-Su pleads that Mi-do never learn the truth; Dae-Su even ends up brainwashing himself via hypnosis to forget the truth -- or "keep his mind shut", in a sense. I mean, huh? This is a pretty juvenile kind of ethics, to be blunt about it. Although Dae-Su is the protagonist the movie really doesn't seem to be on his side. It also hints at a weird kind of passivity: for all of the hammer swinging and octopus eating, Dae-Su doesn't really do all that much: things are done to him, and eventually he begins to internalize the abuse given to him.
Is it about the futility of revenge? One would think, particularly with the references to COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. But leaving aside the notion that Dae-Su's tormentor's omnipresence seems to weigh against the notion of him and Mi-do doing anything, really, but take their lumps or try to fight back, the fact that Dae-Su is considered by the movie to have really "done" something makes any critique pretty complicated. Remember, in COUNT Dantes is a true innocent. His motives are as pure as revenge ever gets -- that's why Dumas's ultimate critique, his ultimate notion that revenge even for the Count is wrong works so well. The force is seen in isolation. Here, though, it seems more a case of Dae-Su learning how "bad" he really is. He shouldn't take revenge because he really IS at fault.
I guess you could argue that the movie shows revenge is futile from the bad guy's point of view. Then why are we watching Dae-Su at all? Maybe the point is that everyone feels themselves righteous until they realize the true dimensions of their "sin". But I don't see a lot of people facing up to facts in the movie: I see a lot of denial, in fact. Dae-Su admits to his relatively "minor" sin but can't face up to his "major" one.
After I saw this I read some interviews with the cast and crew, and apparently some of this vagueness is intentional -- we're supposed to be left unsure. Well, the movie is successful in that, but I think it's an unworthy goal, an abdication of the artist's responsibility. People have bristled at the charge that this movie is nihilistic, but if that really is the point, that the movie's supposed to throw up it's hands and say, "hey, I dunno, you figure it out", then that truly is nihilism.
Ah well, I could go on, but I won't bore you. A virtuosic stupid movie indeed, I think: often amazing to watch but underneath the surface just a whole bunch of muddleheadedness.