Oldboy.

Review #2504: Oldboy.

Cast: 

Choi Min-sik (Oh Dae-su; Oh Tae-kyung as young Dae-su), Yoo Ji-tae (Lee Woo-jin; Yoo Yeon-seok as young Woo-jin), Kang Hye-jung (Mi-do), Ji Dae-han (No Joo-hwan; Woo Il-han as young Joo-hwan), Kim Byeong-ok (Mr. Han), Yoon Jin-seo (Lee Soo-ah), Oh Dal-su (Mr. Park Cheol-woong), and Oh Kwang-rok (Suicidal man) Directed by Park Chan-wook.

Review: 

"Many people tend to differentiate starkly between commercially successful or nonsuccessful movies, but the simple truth is merely that people have differing tastes about what kind of movies they like or don't. The audience seems hazy to me, shrouded in a veil through which I can't see. They are not real, not concrete. So I chose one person to be my sole audience, representing all the audiences out there. That person is my wife. From the scriptwriting and the editing process all the way to deciding on the music, I discuss everything with her thoroughly in detail. She is a normal housewife with an incredible eye who constantly offers me much advice and help."

One of the reasons for New Directors Month is to make up for lost time and go with people that clearly will get further featuring over time. Born to an architect and a poet in Seoul, Park Chan-wook actually planned to be an art critic. His major was philosophy at Sogang University but couldn't quite settle in to his major (the university did not have many arts classes) and found interest in a photography club. He then saw a screening of Vertigo (1958) and apparently was compelled to "at least try to become a movie director"*. Park worked as a film critic (when he had to make money in college, he did stories based on movies prior to being shown in Korea with subtitles) while earning film experience as an assistant director on Kkamdong (1988). He made his attempt to be a filmmaker with The Moon Is... the Sun's Dream (1992) and Trio (1997) ...and neither found an audience, to the point where Park essentially disowned them. At any rate, he kept going, directing the short film Judgement (1999) that basically made him realized that actors "were not puppets". He got his breakthrough with the mystery thriller Joint Security Area (2000), which for a brief time was the highest ever grossing movie in South Korea. Unintentionally, Park's next film became the first of what has been labeled as "The Vengeance Trilogy" with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), with Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005) soon following. According to Park, the theme of vengeance recurred in certain movies of his because of how people have had to deal with the rage and grudges within themselves (with smaller and smaller outlets to get it out) that basically leads to "stories of people who place the blame for their actions on others because they refuse to take on the blame themselves", where morality and guilty consciences are what matters as the subject (he also has stated once that his "through-line of violence" comes with the turbulence he had witnessed as a college youth in the 1980s). In addition to the occasional work for television (such as The Sympathizer in 2024*), Park has continued to make a wide variety of films such as I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (2006), Thirst (2009), The Handmaiden (2016) and his most recent work, No Other Choice (2025).

The source material for the film was the Japanese manga Old Boy, which was written by Garon Tsuchiya and illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi that was serialized from 1996 to 1998. Hwang Jo-yun, Lim Jun-hyung, and Park Chan-wook adapted the script for the film you see here. An unauthorized Indian adaptation called Zinda came out in 2006 before Oldboy was subsequently remade for American audiences with Spike Lee in 2013. What you get here is a movie all about making you feel every nook and cranny of the complexities that arise in what it really means to try and seek revenge and the all-encompassing perils that come with guilt. It is an action thriller of course, with a particularly standout single-shot corridor fight scene, but there is something much more involving in what the movie wants to make you feel in the cycles of violence that come every now and then that isn't so much exploitative as is evocative. The performances are particularly worthwhile to experience this disturbing journey of all-consuming violence, with Choi (who did most of his own stunts) managing to take it all in a stride that fits the film perfectly with where it has to go for a movie that really just involves two people confronting a mirror of each other rather than just good vs. evil. Yoo makes that other side of all-consuming revenge just as unnerving with a chilling performance that really does get under one's skin for what you see of him (I think back to the scene where he is just standing in the room with a mask, honestly). Caught in the middle of it is Kang, who handles it all with such hurried grace in this wavering story of someone trying to understand what they cannot possibly understand. You understand the feeling of being in captivity like a chained beast and wonder if they ever actually got out of the cage. Rage and vengeance can be all-consuming if one allows it to permeate through their wellbeing, and it helps that the film basically spreads its violence out in ways that make the punishments all the more unnerving (whether that involves pulling teeth, eating a live octopus, or, well, with its climax). It is a fairly brisk film that manages to be pretty unnerving with its slow burn about what really matters in the pursuit of "the truth" that you really have to not spoil for yourself. There are no triumphs or easy answers at the end of the film, which actually is a pretty big relief when you get down to it. It's a pretty damn good movie, particularly if you go into it with as little to know as possible to really let it wash over you.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

*Among influences Park listed in 2004 were: "Sophocles, Shakespeare, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Austin, Philip K. Dick, Zelazny and Vonnegut." Fun fact: one influence on Viet Thanh Nguyen when writing The Sympathizer was in fact Park's Oldboy (2003).

Another end to the New Directors Month tradition. Among the finalists for this year include the following: Pigs and Battleships [Shōhei Imamura] · The Man Who Fell To Earth [Nicolas Roeg]  · Wakefield [Robin Swicord] · Bad Company [Robert Benton] · Jacob the Liar [Frank Beyer] · Hundreds of Beavers [Mike Cheslik]

As always, see you next time.