Film Review: Oldboy (2003)

 

This review will be discussing ‘Oldboy’, a 2003 South Korean revenge film by Park Chan-Wook. This film is the second instalment in his unofficial Vengeance trilogy. I watched this film on the suggestion of a friend (although insistence may be a more accurate term). Admittedly I had mixed expectations going in. From the description I’d been given, I was expecting a gritty action film in a similar vain to the ‘John Wick’ series. To my surprise, this is not what the film was at all. Instead, ‘Oldboy’ is a tense, greatly interesting and often disturbing film that must be seen to be believed.

 

‘Oldboy’ tells the story of Oh Dae-su (Choi Min Sik), a regular man who finds himself imprisoned and locked in a small hotel room. However, after spending fifteen years watching the world go by on TV, training himself and plotting his revenge, Dae-Su is mysteriously set free again. From here, he starts his quest not only to find and take revenge on his captor, but to also discover why they treated him this way. Overall, I found this to be a highly engaging story. The film does an excellent job at building an element of mystery from the start, where we first meet our protagonist mid-action, dangling a man off a rooftop. From here the mystery only grows, with interesting call-backs to small details building up to satisfying but shocking plot twists. Along with this, the film touches on some very interesting ideas. Particularly when it comes to discussing the ethics of revenge, repentance and how far people will go to find out the truth. As a result of this, ‘Oldboy’ blends a puzzling mystery with intense human drama to craft a clever, intriguing, and delightfully dark narrative that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout.

 

Coupled with its interesting story, ‘Oldboy’ also has plenty of entertaining action sequences. Admittedly, when going into the film, I had expected a lot more fight scenes, but in reality there is only one full one, accompanied by some smaller scenes. Whilst this may seem disappointing, it is clear the film prioritises quality over quantity in this regard, which leads to all these moments being much more memorable. There’s a very brutal edge the fight scenes, which makes them extremely cathartic when they break up the slower investigation scenes. Along with this, the scenes are brilliantly executed, making them even more exciting to watch. The main fight happens partway through the film, where Dae-Su, armed with a hammer, must fight his way through a corridor filled with men.

This scene is shown from a side on view and as one continuous take. The excellent camerawork here does a great job capturing Dae-Su’s struggle through the corridor, as the viewer gets to see the full effect of the brutal onslaught on him, as well as his violent retaliation. So, whilst ‘Oldboy’ didn’t offer as many fight sequences as I’ve come to expect from revenge films, I’m somewhat glad that this was the case.

 

However, when reviewing ‘Oldboy’, I feel it’s important to note just how disturbing the film is. Without giving too much away, the film touches on some very dark areas, both in terms of the subject matter and the events that occur. Throughout the film there are strong and frequent scenes of violence and torture. Whilst the full impact of these scenes isn’t often shown, they still show enough that I imagine a squeamish audience would have a hard time watching them. This, along with the challenging places the story goes as the mystery unravels, results in a film that might not be to everyone’s taste. Personally, I appreciated this almost sadistic edge the film had. I felt that by delving into these darker aspects, the film became much more impactful. As such, I could only recommend this film to people who are comfortable seeing very dark ideas on screen, however, I would highly recommend it to those who are.

 

In ‘Oldboy’, Park Chan-Wook expertly combines a tense and shocking storyline, bursts of thrilling action and some truly dark moments to create a brilliant film. As mentioned previously, I feel this isn’t a film that everyone will share the same sentiment about as me, but I still believe it’s a film anyone curious about it should check out. Overall, the film left me greatly surprised not just for the shocking way the story goes, but also for not being the film I expected at all, and it’s all the better for it.