Old Boy

‘Oldboy’ (2003) is the second instalment in Chan-wook Park's vengeance trilogy' along with ‘Sympathy for Mr Vengeance’ (2002) and ‘Lady Vengeance’ (2005). As a collection the films have earned quite a following within the Asia Extreme Cinema genre. You can see how the film sits neatly in the sub-genre of the revenge film alongside Tarantino's ‘Kill Bill’ in the sense that with no clearly defined 'good-guy' we are inclined to sit back and enjoy the sadistic nature of revenge without worrying or caring for the storyline but ‘Oldboy’ still manages to stand out amongst the rest. Some may find that the film is a story of excess; sex, violence, torture others may find emotional metaphors.

From the film’s opening and the very first shot of Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) holding a suicidal man over the edge of a building, it is apparent that he is a flawed character; an unwilling hero, but we are aligned with him as our protagonist; our hero. However, the film really begins in flashback as Dae-su saves the suicidal man and tells him "I want to tell you my story."

Oh Dae-su, is being held in custody after being drunk and disorderly, he misbehaves under the police watch and gets bailed out by a friend. There is plenty of dark humour at the start, but it quickly fades into something else. Shortly after this unfortunate encounter he finds himself imprisoned in a hotel room without knowing his captor's motives. The shabby looking room becomes Dae-su's home for the next fifteen years. He relentlessly writes in journals, tattoos himself and watches the 'real' world go by through the window of his television which becomes his only companion during his imprisonment. The claustrophobic atmosphere in the room is well conceived. As time passes, news broadcasts depict the important aspects of cultural identity and impact that he is missing out on, not to mention that he finds out about his wife's death through a news broadcast. Television programming acts as his sequential guide. The compression of real time is effectively presented to the audience through changes in Oh Dae-su's physical (and increasingly unstable mental) condition and the heavy use of jump cuts and montage. However, Oh Dae-su breaks free from the room in an Andy Dufresne-style escape and from then onwards an uncertain suspense surrounds the film as the audience expects the horrific content of Oh Dae-su's prison diaries to come alive. With his captor's fate in hand, Oh Dae-su becomes a social anti-hero after being publicly framed for the murder of his wife and revenge fills his every thought. He is given five days to track down his captor and exact his revenge.

The ordinary world was established with the notion that Oh Dae-su was an unsuccessful family man; a drunk who was in custody on his daughter's birthday. However, after being alone for fifteen years Oh Dae-su becomes his own mentor and he trains his body to the point where he has calluses on his hands from hitting the wall repeatedly over the years. These images are juxtaposed with the first images of the film where we see Oh Dae-su as a slightly overweight, drunk, and disorderly citizen. Oh Dae-su puts his self-taught training to the test in a fight sequence consisting of a huge brawl in an impressively long tracking shot where the voice-over itself contemplates whether imaginary training could prove its worth in the outside world. During his imprisonment he has given himself the physical and mental weaponry needed to survive the real world. At times Oh Dae-su is presented with a comical number of opponents which some people have found unbelievable and unnecessary but it is probably just a reflection upon the film's origins in manga and this allows for some artistic license from the director; with connections in the comic book universe, elements of the surreal are forgiven. Similarly, the aforementioned tracking shot, that covers the length of a long corridor, wouldn't look out of place in a side-scrolling video game and these influences come across as stylish and slick and although the gore is graphic, it is justified. This is not the sort of film that includes the type of 'torture porn' that has become synonymous with Asian Extreme Cinema and the Hollywood films that have flooded the DVD shelves over the past few years.

As the film progresses Oh Dae-su falls into a labyrinth of suspicion and conspiracy. He learns the horrific truth of what happened many years ago and how it has led him to this point - I'm trying not to give too much away – but he meets young girl who will change his life, and not necessarily for the better. Towards the end of the film the villain Woo-jin Lee, fantastically portrayed by Ji-tae Yu, is unbearable. The shocking reveal is presented in a flashback introduced through the haunting sound bridge that rings from a doorbell to a bicycle bell and the events that unfold flirt with the surreal. The ending is extremely reminiscent of Greek or Shakespearian tragedies and the burden that the information leaves Oh Dae-su with is akin to a personal test of endurance, like the initial test of the room; can he live with himself? It's disheartening to know that he lived with himself under such extreme conditions and yet upon release he is given knowledge that hurts him the most. Oh Dae-su seeks solace in hypnosis to help him to get rid him of the monster that he has become; speechless, withered, and tormented. He sees himself as he looks into a window and his personality splits into his true self and his monster self and then watches the monster walk away and die. Usually, a character transformation storyline follows a negative to positive alteration, a change from monster to hero, but in this case, we watch Oh Dae-su morph from hero to monster due to the burden of his past. In a story like this, nobody wins, everybody loses.

Some of the narrative threads are purposely left open for interpretation and it seems to be that one of the film's main messages is that being silent and keeping quiet solves those problems that you don't wish to discuss. Perhaps ignorance is bliss? Perhaps too much room for interpretation is the downfall of ‘Oldboy's’ ending? Perhaps too many questions left unanswered is unsatisfying for an audience? It feels as though Oh Dae-su escapes from his prison room only to find himself tangled up in a web of imprisonment in the outside world, never really being free. The brilliance of the film is captured in the first act of Oh Dae-su's imprisonment. As he becomes a completely different person you are forced to think about yourself in his position and you become attached to him throughout the rest of his journey. But after watching the film once, it's hard to watch again. Watching ‘Oldboy’ a second time around isn't like re-watching ‘The Sixth Sense’ (1999) or ‘Fight Club’ (1999), where you can enjoy picking out bits you missed before that made the twist so unexpected; with foresight it's like experiencing a dull ache as you wait for the story to unfold.

Watch

Country: South Korea
Budget: £
Length: 120mins

Filmography:
‘Fight Club’, 1999, David Fincher, Art Linson Productions
‘The Sixth Sense’, 1999, M. Night Shyamalan, Barry Mendel Productions
'Kill Bill', 2003, Quentin Tarantino, Miramax Films
‘Lady Vengeance’, 2005, Chan-wook Park, CJ Capital Investment
‘Sympathy for Mr Vengeance’, 2002, Chan-wook Park, CJ Entertainment

Pub/2008

More like this:
Taxi Driver, 1976, directed by Martin Scorsese
Last Exit to Brooklyn, 1989, directed by Uli Edel
Irreversible, 2002, directed by Gaspar Noe