Oldboy 올드보이 Review

Oldboy is probably the most famous South Korean film in the entire world, and since it's being remade by Spike Lee this year, I figured I'd watch the original film to see what the fuss was about.

And wow.
Wow.
Wow.

So, I'm just going to go SPOILER this time, because anyone who wants to see it probably already has.

So this guy, Oh Dae Su, is kidnapped and kept in solitary confinement for fifteen years, the only contact with the outside world being the guards that feed him and never talk, and the television in his room. Suddenly, after fifteen years, he is set free, and decides to find out why he was kept inside that room for fifteen years.

So then he meets this girl at a sushi bar, eats a live octopus whole, and then faints. He wakes up in her house, and a very awkward, sexually tense relationship begins as the two try and find out who put him in prison.

Eventually, they find a security guard at the place he was kept, and try to find out who captured him by pulling his teeth out with a hammer. (By the way, this film is really gruesome) and then the famous single-take fight sequence begins, and it's really good. That's definitely the highlight of the film, and there's nothing else that quite matches up to it in the rest, unfortunately.

Finally, following a couple of deaths, sex with the random girl, and several close calls to the man behind everything, he finally catches up to the man, who reveals everything that happened.

So Oh Dae Su and the bad guy used to go to the same school, and the villain had this rather, um, inappropriate relationship with his sister. Oh Dae Su, on his last day at the school, sees this, and spreads a rumor around the school, not realizing that they were siblings. She starts having signs of pregnancy, and commits suicide.

Then the villain, in anguish, decides to enact revenge, kidnaps Oh Dae Su, keeps him away from his daughter for fifteen years, then releases him and with help from a hypnotist, gets Oh Dae Su to fall in love with his daughter, the girl at the sushi bar.

So then, Oh Dae Su is stricken with guilt, begs the villain to not tell the girl, and cuts off his tongue for no reason, resulting in the villain letting him go, and killing himself.

So now, Oh Dae Su tracks down the hypnotist and gets her to make him forget about the identity of the girl he met at the sushi bar, so that they can continue their relationship without the guilt in Oh Dae Su's heart.

What the heck.

Yes, this movie is really well made and brutal, but it's also all kinds of messed up. I have no idea how they're going to remake this for more conservative American cinema, but a lot of the plot twists have to be readjusted for the remake.

It's really a personal preference, but this sort of stuff just makes me uncomfortable sitting there, watching it.

So yeah, it's good. Just make sure you know what you're going into, if you haven't seen it yet.