Please...

Rating: 10/10 (16 October 2005)

I've seen reviews on this place that absolutely does not do the movie justice, accusing it of carrying no real message nor having any coherence at all.
While indeed Oldboy carries no philantrophic messages that make you walk out of your door an inspired man to make the world a better place, the storyline is amazingly well-crafted. While this may be the contribution of the manga it was based on, I believe the director and screenplay writers deserve part of the credit to as to why the story worked so well for a movie.
The director doesn't treat the audience as a dumb customer who paid eight bucks to sit down and get fed with Hollywood table scraps. He drops seemingly random lines that make sense later on, with the unveiling of the plot, step by step, graciously. Whereas some lambast this movie for being nothing more than a movie trying to be artsy and violent at the same time, I seriously don't find this movie as violent as claimed.
This is the part where the explanation that the plot has no coherence fails. People compare this with sixth sense and seven and commented that it lacks coherency and sound sense. I beg to differ. If you're too dumb to pick up the clues and hints of the movie, perhaps your brain is the one which lacks coherence.
The fight scenes in this movie are brief but pleasant. There's no fancy martial arts, slow-motion clichés that the movie industry seemingly enjoy so much nowadays. Very well shot too, not the best fight scenes ever shot in movie industry but very well done.
The dialogues are clever and witty, with a slightly dark sense of humour. Very enjoyably so and the deliverance of these lines feel very natural and flows well with the movie, you don't get that feeling where it seems like the characters are saying it just for the sake of looking cool and badass on their screen time.
Very well-crafted movie. I look forward to more similar rare gems.