Oldboy

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Jordan

Checkin out my bluray.

The 2nd film in Chan-wook Park's thematic trilogy of revenge and probably the most well known. It's pretty slick, stylish, funny, a little violent and quite operatic. It's a mystery with a pretty dark pay off. Min-sik Choi gives a hell of a performance.

This film is probably most famous for it's one take fight sequence of one guy against a whole gang of thugs in a corridor. It's quite a spectacle.

But for all the awesome fighting and stylish transitions, the thing that you'll leave this film thinking about the most is the endings. Even IF you manage to figure out some of the twists in the plot the emotional resonance will still stay with you. That climax is gut-wrenching.

I really love Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, the film that comes after this one. I think it's a little more subtle, well as subtle as Chan-wook Park seems to get but there's something wonderfully melodramatic about this one. Plus it's the only one that seemed to get a wide enough release to allow me to see it in a cinema which was great.

There's been a lot of really cool films coming out of Korea over the last few years. This was the first of them I saw. Check it out.