Review
OLDBOY
Starring Choi Min-sik, Lee Woo-jin and Mido
Directed by Park Chan-wook
Opens Friday, May 6
Uptown Screen
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Korean director Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy takes the general conventions of a revenge drama and pulls them past their snapping point. As an action film, Oldboy splatters its gross-out ultra-violence over a plot that keeps us as much in the dark as our long-suffering hero Oh Daesu (Choi Min-sik). Ultimately the film’s true motivations are rooted more in the story’s overall tragedy than its fisticuffs.
Locked in a room for 15 years – the time passing in a sequence as psychologically frustrating and tenuous for the audience as the slow-mo mountain-climbing sequence in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams – Oh Daesu is suddenly set free and given five days to pursue his captors.
Already growing in infamy thanks to a particularly memorable gross-out scene in a sushi bar (the squeamish set might want to close their eyes when Min-sik says "I want to eat something live"), Oldboy should be equally noted for its style, direction and twisted heart as its visual trickery.
At times, Oldboy takes on the guise of a sweet waltz-driven romance somewhere in the general postal code of Amelie meets Chinatown. Mido (Hye-jeong Kang) is every bit as doe-eyed and doll-faced as Audrey Tautou, but it’s easy to buy her attraction to the bloodthirsty Daesu. While most action films throw their heroines in perilous situations that result in nothing more than perfectly made-up scratches, Oldboy doesn’t play by the same rules. It’s easy to see the ties between Park and Quentin Tarantino (the president of the Cannes jury that bestowed their top award on the film) – as a flipped coin to Kill Bill, Oldboy’s heroes end up just as bloodied and broken as its villains.
Where Oldboy truly succeeds is in overcoming its own gaps of reason and implausibility through a relentless sense of drive and dark-as-squid-ink humour. By the time all of the pieces are lined up in place, it’s hard to even question where Park’s headed. Oldboy comes to its messy conclusion whether you’re up for it or not. |
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