Oldboy
by Chan-wook Park
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DVD details
Actor: Dae-han Ji, Dal-su Oh, Hye-jeong Kang, Ji-tae Yu, Min-sik ChoiDirector: Chan-wook Park
Brand: OLDBOY
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Korean (Original Language), Dolby Digital 6.1 EX; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1 EX
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-23
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Tartan Video
DVD Reviews of Oldboy
DVD Review: Old Boy - Great Fun
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie comes highly recommended. Not your average Hollywood style flick - with lots of action and a poor misguided hero with an unexpected plot twist at the end - loved itDVD Review: This movie was bad on so many levels.
Summary: 1 Stars
I had heard about Oldboy before. IMDB has a very high rating for it, as does RottenTomatoes. It's got revenge. It's got violence. It received a thumbs-up from Quentin Tarantino. Everything seemed to be pointing in a positive direction for Oldboy ... until I actually saw it. This was one of those rare movies that started out at 5 stars - I really liked the premise of the 15 year imprisonment and subsequent release - but then everything derailed about 20 minutes into the movie. It's a repulsive film, about repulsive topics, populated by repulsive characters. There's just not much to like. Here's a quick tip for budding omniscient billionaires who are out for revenge: If your evil plot is so convoluted and so drawn-out that the person you're targeting has to be hypnotized into REMEMBERING WHAT THEY DID TO YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE, then maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board.
** SPOILERS BELOW **
On one side of the equation you have Omniscient Billionaire who:
- murdered wife
- framed husband for that murder
- imprisoned husband for 15 years
- used Evil Hypnotist (tm) to re-program father and daughter
- forced father and daughter into having sex
On the other side you have:
- guy who started a rumor that brother and sister were having sex. Which wasn't so much a rumor as it was the truth.
I'm not sure what lesson Oldboy is trying to teach us, but it was lost on me. There were just so many stupid parts to this movie. My personal favorite is when Oldboy leaves Mi-do in the care of a gangster that had his hand chopped off by Omniscient Billionaire. In the culminating 'This is why I've been torturing you for 15 years' scene, Mr. Billionaire smugly tells us, "Did you really think (gangster) would betray me? You stupid fool! I gave him an apartment so he would let me cut off his hand! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!"
Yeah. Right. Like anyone in their right mind would see that coming. I will give the movie this, however. It's not the type of film that you will watch and then forget. Sadly, some of those scenes will be burned into my brain for quite some time. Thanks a lot, Oldboy.
DVD Review: Hard to swallow
Summary: 3 Stars
15 years' imprisonment, followed by five days of vengeance. But there's a twist: Oh Dae-su has not escaped from prison, he was released. The reason is the film's mystery, and as he attempts to solve it, it becomes clearer that someone is one step ahead of him.
Something of a spoiler follows, so stop now if you want to avoid it. It's not easy for me to figure out why I felt this film was a letdown. A lot of it I think has to do with the resolution. The tragedy seems neither justified in light of the characters and their actions nor adequately prepared in view of the what's on screen leading up to it. For three-quarters of the film we have something the look (apart from rough dentistry) and pace of which might fit Jason Statham (and I don't mean that as an insult). Then the last 20 minutes are supposed to hit us with the force of Greek tragedy -- all engineered, moreover, by the bad guy, and implausibly so. On the whole it is unconvincing.
Not something I regret seeing, because it's different from what's made available at the multiplex. But it won't be going on any list of favorites either.
DVD Review: Best movie ever!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This movies is the best revenge movie ever. And the person that shipped it did a very good and quick job. DVD Review: Boring & Badly Acted
Summary: 1 Stars
I was bored out of my mind when I watched this film. The "cinematic" quality is there, in terms of effects and editing, but the plot was poorly adapted and made it come off like it was from a badly-written comic book. I just found the whole thing contrived, implausible, and dry. There's very little done, wether in the directing, or the screenplay, to make you care about the far-fetched plot.
Description of Oldboy
Oh Dae-su is an ordinary Seoul businessman with a wife and little daughter who, after a drunken night on the town, is abducted and locked up in a strange, private prison. No one will tell him why hes there and who his jailer is and his fury builds to a single-minded focus of revenge. 15 years later, he is unexpectedly freed, given a new suit, a cell-phone and 5 days to discover the mysterious enemy who had him imprisoned. Seeking vengeance on all those involved, he soon finds that his enemys tortures are just beginning.In the realm of revenge thrillers, you'd be hard pressed to find more ultra-violent vengeance and psycho thrills than in the creepy story of Oldboy. This Korean import made a pop splash at the Cannes Film Festival and during its limited theatrical run thanks to the imprimatur of Quentin Tarantino, who raved about it and its visionary director, Chan-wook Park, to anyone who would listen. It's easy to see why QT fell in love with the grindhouse attitude, fast-paced action, violent imagery, and icy-black humor, but it's a disservice to think of Oldboy as another Tarantino homage or knockoff. The darkly existential undercurrent in the themes that Oldboy traces over its life-long narrative arc is much more complex and deeply disturbing than anything of its kind. The movie's tagline is, "15 years of imprisonment... 5 days of vengeance." The imprisonee is Oh Dae-Su, an ordinary Joe who is snatched off a Seoul street corner and locked away in a dank, windowless fleabag hotel room for the aforementioned 15 years. Just as abruptly he is released, and thus the five days begin. Why did this happen to Oh Dae-Su? Ah, but that would be telling, and in fact we don't know ourselves until the final wrenching scenes.
Oldboy breaks into a classic three-act saga, the first of which details the hallucinatory period of imprisonment in which Oh Dae-Su wades from mild insanity to outright psychosis in the hands of unseen yet attentive captors. Act 2 is the revenge, when an entirely different tone takes over and Oh Dae-Su moves with single-minded purpose and clarity. It's this section that has gained the most notoriety, primarily for the claw-hammer dentistry scene, the one-man-army tracking shot, and the wriggling octopus that Oh Dae-Su consumes in a sushi bar (he's been dead so long he simply needs life back inside him in any way possible). In act 3, answers finally start to emerge and the sinister atmosphere grows even more profound--not without a healthy dose of extra bloodletting, of course. Oldboy is an undeniably poetic masterpiece of tension, fury, and dynamic craft. Ultimately, its epic cycle of tragedy is of the sort that mankind has been inflicting upon itself for all time. Some of the images may be gruesome, but all converge into a kind of beauty. It's in the telling of this lurid tale that these details become one and the memories of pain ultimately heal. --Ted Fry
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