Movie Review

Oldboy

Oldboy is being marketed to the indie crowd as an action-packed revenge flick courtesy of the cinematically hot nation of Korea (South, that is; North is still on Kim Jong-IL lockdown). While the movie seemed to have promise, especially to a cult/foreign film-head like me, it ultimately comes up empty-handedly and leaves a glaring wake of disappointment.

Oh Dae-Su is a drunken businessman who is thrown into a police station, presumably for being rowdy in public. His friend comes to bail him out, but after they get outside in the rain and go to a payphone, Oh Dae-Su disappears. We learn that he has been captured by anonymous people and thrown in a prison cell that looks like a shabby, creepy motel room. The only thing he has with him to occupy his mind is a television. Oh Dae-Su goes on to spend fifteen years in the cell, plotting his revenge; he shadowboxes and punches the wall until his fists bleed. And he also has psychotic breakdowns as he imagines ants crawling under his skin and all over his body.

This is the good part of the movie (even though it's pretty horrific). After he gets out of his prison, the story crumbles into an ultra-confusing freak show that is hard to watch on several levels. Instead of going into hyper revenge-movie overdrive, it becomes a connect-the-pieces Memento-type exercise that is impossible to follow (especially for non-Korean audiences). You're a much smarter person than I am if you can explain the plot of this movie.

The revenge scenes also have no kinetic energy and are straightforward, and the choice of music is deplorable. In one long fight sequence, Mexican music plays, which contradicts the onscreen events; the director is thinking El Mariachi rather than the Korean action film he is in charge of. As a nod to Tarantino or Rodriguez or whomever, elements like this in the movie fall flat.

This movie uses flashbacks and time looping as a shortcut out of an actual story that people can follow and relate to. And some people will think this movie is genius by sheer virtue of how confusing it is; American critics may praise it, but primarily because it's a movie with critics on its mind rather than regular filmgoers (even of the art-house variety). Filling the screen with disorientation and expecting it to stick as a story is not an effective directing technique. Oldboy is a somewhat noble failure, though - it has a lot of cool style, and the director clearly has talent. Unfortunately, the film is simply a grind to watch.

Scott's Grade: C

A	15.1%
B	59.2%
C	24.5%
D	1.2%
F	0.0%