Paperjam

Oldboy on DVD

Film // Jim // 13th March 2005

Imagine that one drunken evening you are abducted and imprisoned in a substandard hotel room with only a TV for company. You have no idea why you are there and no-one, least of all your family and friends, know what has happened to you.
You are drugged, hypnotised and fed the same food every day of your fifteen year stay, during which you learn that your wife has been killed and the media assume that it was you that did it.

No, this isn’t a snapshot of life for the average UK shoplifter once Blair gets his ridiculous “Terror” laws through the legislature. Rather, this is the fate that befalls the unfortunate Oh Dae-Su, protagonist of the Korean revenge drama Oldboy.

Once our hero is eventually released from his mysterious captivity (and goes out for something to eat) he is set the task of discovering why he was locked up and by whom. In keeping with the twisted, fatalistic proceedings thus far, he is given just five days to do this otherwise there will be some fairly unpleasant consequences.

Fortunately Oh Dae-Su has spent the fifteen years becoming a hard as nails mad bastard, primarily through a series of drug induced, scary any hallucinations and a fitness regime based around punching a wall, repeatedly.

Oh Dae-Su: Imprisoned, hard as nails

Given some snippets of information and access to a claw hammer he starts to piece together what has happened to him with some help from a TV chef who was one of his favoured viewing options during the years of incarceration.

These investigations are a violent and mostly unpleasant affair, involving the aforementioned hammer, some DIY dentistry and some fairly amazing revelations regarding what is actually going on.

The film swings from a downbeat and brutal mystery to a dizzying, hysterical (and still fairly brutal) climax based around a series of plot twists, that I, for one didn’t see coming. The whole lot ends in an extremely ambiguous manner with the final shot being open to all sorts of interpretation.

Oldboy went down a storm at last years Cannes film festival and if you can stomach the more hard-core content, then it is easy to see why. It marries the comic book action violence of something like (the far more unpleasant) Ichi The Killer with a truly interesting meditation on the nature and purpose of revenge.

The Kafka-esque plot keeps you gripped all of the way with some seriously dark twists and insanely off the wall moments. Technically it is tremendous, with fantastic aesthetics and some neat cinematic flourishes that make me wish that I had seen this on the big screen.
Another plus is the excellent performance of Choi Min-Sik as Oh Dae-Su which really holds the film together, the word “Committed” springs to mind for more than one reason.

Oldboy in da corner: Brutal, dark twists

The stand out moment for me is the scene in which Oh Dae-Su takes on a gang of (at least ten) bat wielding henchmen in a dank corridor armed only with his trusty hammer. This colossal dust up is shown from the side in one continuous shot as some seriously painful looking (and sounding) violence is administered. Going on for several minutes, it knocks the shit out of other long take scenes such as the start of Touch of Evil or The Player.

I can whole heartedly recommend this film as long as:
- You are not eating while you watch it.
- You are not scared of the dentist.
- You are not a hippy marine biologist (trust me on this one).

Oldboy linkage...

Japanese Oldboy web site

Very swish web site with music and images from the film

Korean Cinema Edition

Loads of info on Korean films, which on the strength of Oldboy may be well worth checking out

Oldboy IMDB Page

Many spoilers, you have been warned