Oldeuboi / Oldboy (2003) – 3/5

Relatively old movie by now, but still a good watch despite some flaws

„Oldeuboi“ or „Oldboy“ or „Old Boy“, but not (Gary) Oldman or Old Man, is a South Korean film in the Korean language that was filmed in Busan in South Korea, so the direction here is clear. The movie is from 2003, which means it will have its 20th anniversary soon and if you look at the quantity of ratings this title has received on imdb, you will immediately understand that it is among the most defining films from Korea and also from Asia from the 21st century. And if you also look at everything else that was done in Korea movie-wise in the last over 20 years, then you know what that means. The 8.4-rating and the film being currently at #70 in the imdb top250 is also self-explanatory. This has the potential to be seen as a classic in the future, even if I would not go this far as you can see from my rating. But first things first: The director is of course Park Chan-wook and this was not from the early days of his career. He had already been active for about a decade in terms of shooting projects at that point, but still you see that he will turn 60 soon now, so this means that also he did not start making movies at a really young age either. As always, he was also the writer or was one of the writers I should say of this film that runs for exactly two hours. If we look at the other two, Minegichi and Tsuchiya, you will find one name who has drawn really many mangas that got turned into films at some point while the other has Oldboy only in his credits and also of course the American version by Oldboy that got made a decade later by Spike Lee and starring Josh Brolin. That one did not turn into a big success, so most people rather stay with the original. I have not seen that American version though, so I cannot talk about differences and parallels here, but I found Lee always a bit on the overrated side and lacking subtlety with his approach to everything, so I am not surprised at all.

Let’s look at this one here instead: It is part of a trilogy by director Park Chan-wook and all three films deal with the subject of vengeance. I wish I could say more about the cast, but I am not too familiar with most of the actors or at least I don’t remember them from other projects. Surely my loss, but I am doing my best to widen my horizon when it comes to Asia’s defining films and performers. Seeing this one here is surely a step in the right direction. Pretty much everybody from the cast, including lead actor Choi Min-sik, who is about the same age like director Park Chan-wook, have had solid careers before or after this film and in most cases, it was not just one of the two, but they kept delivering and acting in mentionable projects before and after „Oldeuboi“, even if not really any turned out as much of a hit as „Oldeuboi“. I must also mention Kang Hye-jeong, who plays the central female character and Jin-Seo Yoon, one of the bigger supporting players. Both were pretty young when this film got made and for sure also pretty pretty. Still, at the center of it all, for me it never felt like anybody else’s story than Oldboy’s, so the one of lead actor Choi Min-sik’s character here. I guess I will just do some brainstorming now today and talk about a few key aspects from this film that stayed in my mind: You can see from my rating that I liked the watch, but did not consider it a superb experience and I think the rating on imdb as well as the awards attention were a bit exaggerated. The biggest award for it probably came from the Cannes Film Festival, even if it did not win its nomination for the Palme d’Or. It also did not go home empty-handed though. The soundtrack is with very heavy focus on classical music. It is a bit ironic sometimes when you hear loud and majestic tunes coming with scenes that are pretty gruesome and painful to watch in terms of what you see there exactly. Let me just say that this is not really a film that people will enjoy a lot if they fear dentist visits. And it is not even only the teeth that are getting their fair share here, but the tongue as well.

The performances are all quite solid, some even pretty good. I also liked the main antagonist here. I think the actor’s name is Woo-jin Lee. He was scary and also well-written and a good casting choice. The idea of this little remote he carries around and what happens when you push the button was one of the best inclusions from the film for me, especially with what happens in the end when the title character manages to get his hands on the remote and the truth is revealed. I must still say I had also a few issues with this movie here: A great deal of what happens felt rather for the sake of it and drama that did not make too much sense for me. The best, i.e. Worst, example was maybe from a moment when the main character fights a bunch of street thugs and there we see on one occasion how one of the group who is about to attack is pushed aside from one of his own and seconds later he falls down like everybody else as if Oldboy caused him some serious physical damage. That made no sense. In general, I struggled with the idea that Oldboy had become such an almost invincible fighting machine during his 15-year imprisonment. Difficult to believe, even if of course he had all the time in the world to get strong. So yeah, this is the key story here. We have a man who is imprisoned for 15 years and he does not know why. He is kept alive though and after these 15 years (and attempts to dig a tunnel like in The Shawshank Redemption) he is finally released and it is up to him to find his captor(s) and also find out why he was imprisoned. It becomes obvious quickly that it is much more about the „why“ than about the „who“ because it does not take him super long to identify his tormentor. He even has a chance to kill him, but he does not take it because that would have meant for him to never find out the reason.

A few lines earlier, I talked about things and inclusions from this film that I did not like and unfortunately there were more, also at the very end. This for example also refers to the decision of the main character to cut off his own tongue and he really goes through with it, so he was not just playing. I mean okay, this is another area of the world, another culture and other society standards, but it still felt difficult for me to believe that the girl meant so much to him that he would humiliate and mutilate himself there in an irrevocable way to kinda save her. Also because it meant that once again the bad guy wins, the one who did all this to Oldboy. By the way, Oldboy (or the actor) does look a bit like Robert Downey Jr., doesn’t he? Anyway, I also did not like what the bay guy did to himself in the elevator. Maybe he considered himself the winner and that the game is over and suddenly realizes he has nothing else to live for anymore? He even said that he was watching Oldboy during the imprisonment and that it meant he was not alone I think, so clearly he is pretty isolated. But I still did not buy that he would kill himself there right away, even if I found the idea kinda interesting that maybe nobody really knew the code now to get down there, but this is also fixed as we see in the end when Oldboy talks to the mysterious woman who was also in a way part of all this. Strangely enough, he does not have a grudge against her or at least not in a way that he wants to kill her too. Then again, he needs her for his plans to get hypnotized to forget. Besides, the bad guy shooting his helper in the head and killing him I was also not too big on, seemed like more pseudo drama to me and you can probably find explanations if you are on the lookout to find them, but nothing really makes enough sense for me. The entire idea that the two main characters were hypnotized in the first place to make a connection was so-so for me. I would have preferred in a way for this to be fate without an impact from the villain(s).

Oh yeah, this meeting also resulted in the scene where the title character eats an octopus alive. Now I am definitely not a fan of sepia the way I like other (furrier) animals, but this was just kinda gruesome to watch and I would have preferred the film being released without this scene, especially as apparently they really used live octopuses for this and it was not an artificial prop. It seems to be a thing to eat them like this in Asia. Rough. Oh well, I am sure that Asians are also not happy with some of our eating habits, but still despite all the violence included in the rest of the film, for me this was maybe the toughest scene to watch. Now, I mentioned a whole lot of negative, but obviously, as you see from my rating, I did not hate it all. The revelation with the incest plot was decent, also how it was depicted with the girl falling into the water and also how the main character was watching as a young man and I also liked the explanation from the bad guy that the main character was not brainwashed, but had simply forgotten about it. As Oldboy was running around on the premises again, the past and the now come together and that was depicted in a really creative way. In total, I liked the style and atmosphere from this film and it was a quite rewarding watch, maybe not always, but at times for sure. I am still wondering about the complete absence of police though. Anyway, I stated that I am glad I got to see this on the big screen and it is true. Also nice to see old films like this one result in a really packed movie theater and I hope this will inspire film theater owners to show more old films in the future. People happily take the chance to watch them. That much is safe and I am sure the second and last showing of this film three days from now will attract just as many viewers and we are here in Europe, neither in Asia nor in America where this amount would maybe not have surprised too many. With this film here, I would still say it also enough to watch it on the small screen. I give it a not overly enthusiastic thumbs-up.