Ugh.

Rating: 6/10 (2 August 2005)

I saw Old Boy on a grey market DVD about half a year ago and fell asleep during the first twenty minutes. Since then, my friends have literally been begging me to see it to the end, so this Saturday I watched it on the big screen where I had no chance of escape.
Boy was that a mistake. Old Boy is by turns idiotic, horrendous and senselessly violent. It lacks the glee of the most basic revenge film. Even Kill Squad did it better.
Old Boy simply has no point to speak of. My question is: How did the director and scriptwriter screw up a revenge thriller?
Old Boy is very reminiscent of Takashi Miike's far superior Ichi the Killer. The difference between Ichi and Old Boy is one of extremes. Both films revolve around extracting brutal revenge. In this film, the eponymous hero seeks vengeance for fifteen years of imprisonment in a hotel room. In Ichi, Kakihari, a Yakuza enforcer, must track down his kidnapped Boss who may or may not be dead. Both Kakihari and Old Boy use torture to achieve their ends, but in Ichi the violence is committed by such dedicated sadists that it transcends itself and becomes Dionysian. Thusly, Ichi is far more violent than Old Boy, but far more aware. In Old Boy, the violence does nothing but communicate itself as alternately grotesque and depressing.
The end of this film is so unbelievable that it made me wonder why they didn't just let a seven year old rewrite it. It was that bad. If you thought the end of Ichi was head-scratching, wait until you see this one. You will feel so betrayed by Old Boy's cop-out you may never want to see another South Korean film again.
I think the ridiculous praise this film received (Ebert and Tarantino included) happened because NO ONE was comfortable recommending Ichi. Additionally, Ichi was not distributed theatrically in Ontario (Where I live) and was for a period, even banned.
Ichi is a more violent, more difficult film, but it's rewards are far greater than this misdirected piece of trash. How this film ended up at Cannes is beyond me. I think it was because of the reputation of Park Chan's much better "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance".
Most likely, nothing I'm going to write here is going to prevent the curious from seeing this film. But if you feel like your time was wasted, don't tell me I didn't warn you.