Highly recommended

Rating: 8/10 (13 August 2007)

Don't let that title fool you (or the reviews from people that don't understand genre)this horrifying revenge thriller from Korea's dark maestro Park Chan-wook, who gave us the wonderful Sympathy for Mr Vengeance is making the British and American offerings in this genre look pretty quaint. Oldboy has touches of Kafka, and echoes of British paranoia thrillers like The Ipcress File and The Prisoner. But it opens up a whole new sicko frontier of exotic horror, and more or less reduced my intestines to guacamole both times I watched it, not so much with its violence - although heaven knows there's a super-sized helping of that - but with a queasily ingenious imprisonment-torture impossible to contemplate without a prickling of cold sweat.
Oldboy certainly shows that it's Asia where the farthest reaches of extreme cinema are to be found, and the worst nightmare is that 15 years in prison, which leaves the numbed viewer wondering if that is an unspeakably long time - or perhaps an unspeakably short time in the nihilist wasteland Park conjures up. "What happens after you've revenged yourself?" wonders Dae-su. "I bet the hidden pain will come back." This is cinema that holds an edge of cold steel against your throat.