Not worth all the hype

Rating: 4/10 (31 December 2006)

I am incredibly confused about how Oldboy managed to make IMDb's top 250. While the basic premise is promising, the plot is contrived and really doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The violence is grotesque, the cinematography is amateur and the choreography of action sequences reminds me of a Weird Al Yankovic video. Furthermore the "values" expressed in this film just don't seem to transfer to Western culture at all
On the positive side other than the action scenes, Min-sik Choi does a good job with what he has to work with. He makes Oh Dae-Su's transformation from a mild-mannered businessman into a vengeful thug as believable as possible.