Oldboy

Oldboy ranks among the rarest of movies - it's that unique film that gives you a genuine rush. Watching Chan Wook Park's near-miraculous command of cinema language actually gave me a jolt of energy. As Quentin Tarantino said after viewing the film at Cannes, you won't get any sleep the night after watching Oldboy. You'll be too busy reliving it, either in conversation or just by replaying its highlights in your mind. This is one of the absolute best films to come out this decade, along with Mulholland Drive and City of God. If you live in Los Angeles or New York, the movie opens in selected theaters on Friday. Don't miss it.



Oldboy is so good, in fact, I refuse to blow it for you by telling you too much about it. Here's the short, short version:

A man named Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is kidnapped off the street and imprisoned in a cheap hotel room. He's told nothing about why he's been taken or when he will be released, and receives no information about the outside world except what comes in on his television set. After 15 years have passed, he's set free, leaving him bitter about his experience, newly-strong from years of working out in isolation and obsessed with the idea of revenge against his captors.

Okay, you already know too much. That's all I'm gonna give you.

So, the movie's a revenge drama, which makes it unsurprising to find Quentin Tarantino among its ardent fans. He recently directed a two-part revenger of his own you may have heard a thing or two about. But this film is no cartoon pastiche of chop-socky cinema. It's an overload of tension and suspense, a remarkably interesting, deftly shot and edited saga of vengeance piling upon vengeance, hatred exacerbating hatred, until all the character's are utterly spent and unable to hate any longer.

Min-sik Choi is a marvel here, projecting both a wounded innocence and fierce determination in every scene. During the course of the film, he's called upon to commit all manner of violent atrocities, from...well, to give name to these atrocities would spoil the fun. Suffice it to say, his character really gets run through the ringer. 15 years of isolated imprisonment is only the beginning of his torments, not to mention the torment he visits upon others.

And yet the film works because Dae-su refuses to succumb to his ferocious anger. Throughout it all, he remains a likable, charming man. When we first meet him, he's been detained in a police station for drunken, disorderly behavior, and the affable, if somewhat cavalier, side of his personality remains intact despite the world of hurt that's brought down upon him.

And make no mistake: Oldboy is a relentlessly tough film. It's hard, brutally violent and eventually disturbing. It's not that there's an overabundance of gore (particularly considering that this is Asian cinema we're talking about here, which frequently delves into more violent hardcore imagery than American directors would dream of filming). In fact, the movie's almost demure at points about on-screen violence, choosing to keep a good deal of the really sadistic actions off-screen.

It's the strength of Park's filmmaking that makes the film such a rewarding, if occasionally punishing, experience. He and editor Sang-Beom Kim have given the film a fast-paced, buzzy, thoroughly appropriate style. Many will be reminded of David Fincher's Fight Club, another film that capitalized on clever edits, gloomy urban landscapes and underlit office buildings. Park also borrows Fincher's unique CG zooming effects. Just as we pass through 10 stories of a skyscraper to inspect the bomb-filled vans in the basement during the opening scene of Fight Club, we skip in between Dae-su's chopsticks just as he takes a bite of fried dumpling.

We experience Dae-su's breathless excitement at being released, his harrowing sadness at discovering the fate of his family, and his mad rage when faced with his enemy because of not only the power of Choi's performance but the keen eye of Park and his cinematographer, Jeong-hun Jeong. I really can't say enough about the exemplary work that was done on crafting the look and tone of Oldboy. And not just because it keeps me from having to reveal any more about the story. But because this is a film in which all the little pieces, all the technical details, come together to create something much larger and much more impressive.

One final note on Oldboy. It's not so much a perfectly-told revenge story, but a re-creation of the genre. Park screws everything around. He gives us a revenge story that's more about the why than the who. Murder is the last thing on Dae-su's mind as he relentlessly pursues the truth about his abduction. He doesn't want to kill his captors, he wants to interrogate them. He wants to know why he's been taken away from everything he cares about, as if any answer could possibly satisfy him or fill his sense of loss. And when we finally get through the film, we realize that each character has been motivated by that which harms others, rather than benefits themselves. Revenge here works as an endless cycle, a loop of violence and despair borne of the emptiness inside of us, rather than the despicable acts of others.

There was a segment in the first Kill Bill movie in which The Bride (Uma Thurman) kills Vivica A. Fox in front of her child. The Bride tells the child to look her up one day if she desires revenge for the death of her mother. Oldboy tells both of their stories, as well as Bill's story, a mystery and two tragic family dramas. It's a triumph.