Film Reviews

Oldboy

• Rating:
• Director: Park Chan-Wook
• Starring: Choi Min-sik, Yu Ji-tae, Kang Hye-ieong, Ji Dae-han, Oh Dal-su, Kim Byeong-ok, Kim Su-hyeon, Lee Seung-jin, Yun Su-kyeong, Park Myeong-shin.
• Details: S. Korea/ 120 mins/ (no cert).

Based on the acclaimed Manga comic book, Oldboy is a sharply made, slickly edited revenge thriller which sees Choi Min-sik playing Dae-su Oh, a man who has been locked up for the past 15 years. Understandably aggrieved at losing a decade and a half of his life, Dae-su Oh escapes his hellish confines and decides that a spot of revenge wouldn't go amiss. Cue quite a bit of bloodshed as he begins to retrace the steps that led to his mysterious capture and confinement all those years ago. Unlike other revenge thrillers doing the rounds, there's no pithy sense of higher justification invoked in Oldboy. Rather this is a cinematic jolt of adrenaline, a crushingly violent and unflinching look at pure and simple vengeance, recounted with a breathless skill and dexterity by a confident director. Quentin Tarrantino apparently fell in love with the film while presiding in Cannes this year and awarded it the Grand Jury prize, so an American remake is probably already on the cards. A final word of warning: since Oldboy contains some of the most fiendishly inventive scenes of violence this one was probably not designed with your granny in mind.

Review by Garreth Murphy