Review of Oldboy (2003) by John M — 16 Jul 2013

I rewatched this for the first time in more than a couple of years, and I still have the same problems with it. It's about this one guy, Oh Dae-Su (Min-sik Choi), who gets inexplicably kidnapped off the streets and locked alone in a room for fifteen years.

He is then released, and the movie is him trying to figure out who wronged him and, more importantly, why. This is a very cool looking movie; they have some very original ideas and they present them to you in a way you have never seen before.

The hallway scene, for instance, is novel and fantastic. There's a lot to like about this movie... but, at the same time, I can never really get into it. I've thought about this long and hard and it all boils down to character motivation (and morals that kill all sense of pathos, but I can't really go into that without hitting major spoilers).

Some people may buy it, but I just never could. All the big motivating factors here, when the characters come to them, they wildly overreact in a way that nobody I know would ever even dream of. This makes it especially difficult to connect with, but the thing that really does it for me is questioning the movie in hindsight.

"Okay, I just watched a lot of cool ultraviolence. Why did it all happen? What was the point?"? And that's right; there isn't reason for all the carnage; the violence is pointless which makes it style over substance.

It's a shame, though, because there is a lot to recommend here, it just needs more backbone.