The 2nd greatest film of all time.

Rating: 10/10 (11 February 2014)

What is it, where is it, how will it affect me? After being kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years, a man is released, only to find that he must find his captor in 5 days. Number 2 sees a controversial choice: a film that has in fact been passionately set on fire with denouncement by a number of critics. Nonetheless, what I find in Oldboy is comfort of a strange kind. What Park Chan-wook creates in his twisted and surreal world is an untouchable empathetic consistency. The protagonist, named Oh Dae-su (Min Sik-choi), is quite frankly the most three dimensional, intriguing, inspiring and hard-hitting character ever to grace the screen. His conduct is real yet fantastic, defiant yet compassionate. Aside from Oh Dae-su's remarkable and unmatchable persona, sweetly showcased by his narration of the taxonomy of rock bream whilst indifferently wearing a stolen pair of women's sunglasses, or as he walks away, undisturbed by the suicide-by-falling of a man he has just told his story to, and what this brings to not just the film as a whole but its ability to connect with a certain breed of audience, the directing is arguably flawless. If one only has five minutes to spare, I recommend taking what could just be the most impressive scene of stature and presence in the history of cinema: the corridor fight scene, shot over four days (it is a continuous one take with only correction of punches comprising the totality of the computer editing intervention), where we are shown a trademark of the calibre of filmmaking that Oldboy contains. I've never seen anything like it. I watch it again and again, dumbstruck to its perfection, as composer Jo Yeong-wook's magnificent and moving score sombrely serenades over the visuals. Oldboy touches on some controversial and taboo subjects which deter the average viewer, but to the trained eye what Park has done with them is to create a piece of cinema that rip-roaringly strips back the layers of the heart to ultimate bareness, whilst still including some of the best action shots in any film to date. Oh Dae-su's tormented soul, battered and bruised both physically and mentally throughout, compliments the captured transition of his mental state into a 'monster' as well as the finest white wine with fish. Lee Woo-jin's distress, his patience and craftsmanship of a bizarrely pleasurable witty kind of sociopathic torture is portrayed with uncompromising genius: studying the sheer power of the final scenes in his penthouse and his ultimate relinquish into decline is taxing and infesting. Many cast Oldboy aside as a publicity stunt, and fail to see past the octopus. What I'm trying to say, in the end, is that Oldboy earns its place as the second greatest film ever made because of how is depicts the depth that human emotion can delve to.