Movies - Oldboy

	Movies - Oldboy

Oldboy (Hangul:올드보이) is a 2003 South Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook based on a Japanese manga of the same name. While the film is a story of revenge and utilizes many elements of film noir to examine the nature of sin and morality, it is ultimately a Greek tragedy. The bare outlines of the plot are reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo (the director himself makes the homage explicit at one point), but the movie diverges very freely from its source. It is the second installment of Park's "vengeance trilogy", following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and followed by Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.

The film won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and had won high praises from director Quentin Tarantino. It is currently being remade in the United States by director Justin Lin, best known for the teen crime drama Better Luck Tomorrow
. Zinda, the Bollywood film directed by Sanjay Gupta, also bears a striking resemblance to Oldboy, but is not an officially sanctioned remake.

Tagline: 15 Years Of Imprisonment...5 Days Of Vengeance.

Plot

The film begins with the silhouette of a man holding onto a rope-like object. Off camera, we hear another man say "What?" in a terrified voice. It is revealed that the silhouette is grasping the necktie of the same person, barely managing to keep him from falling off the edge of a building. The savior then states, in a calm manner, "I said, I wanted to tell you my story." to the bewildered man. "What the hell? Why are you talking like that? Who the fuck are you?" he exclaims. The camera zooms in on the face of the silhouette, partially blocked out by the sun's glare, who says "My...name is..."

The movie then cuts backward to the year 1988. Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), is a Korean businessman with a wife and daughter. He is picked up by police for being drunk and disorderly, and has to be bailed out by a close friend. While his friend is in a phonebooth calling Dae-su's daughter, Dae-su is kidnapped by persons unknown.

We then find Dae-su in what appears to be a private prison resembling a shabby hotel room. He has been kept there for two months with no word of who is holding him there or why. He is gassed into unconsciousness whenever he becomes violent or suicidal, or when his holders need access to the room (e.g. to maintain it; cut his hair). His only contact with the outside world is through the television, from which he learns one day that his wife has been murdered, his daughter has been sent to foster parents and that he is himself the prime suspect. This, together with his continued captivity, causes Dae-su to slide into near-madness.

Attempting to get a grip on his sanity and determine his captor, Dae-su fills several notebooks with an autobiography-cum-prison diary, but is unable to figure out who would hate him so profoundly as to imprison him like this. He forces himself to train by shadow boxing, punching at the walls of his prison until thick calluses form on his knuckles. When one of his deliveries of fried dumplings turns out to have an extra metal chopstick, he conceals it and uses it to slowly dig a hole into one of the walls. Over the next fifteen years, he works out, follows current events on TV, and loosens enough bricks to glimpse the outside world once again, only to find that he is near the top of a high-rise building, and escape would be nearly impossible.

Just as abruptly as he was captured, Dae-su is set free on the rooftop of a building with a new suit of clothes, a wallet full of money, a cellphone, and his prison diaries. Adjusting to the bright afternoon light, he sees another man sitting on the edge of the building with his small dog. The first human being he has interacted with in fifteen years, Oh Dae-su is taken aback, unable to have a proper conversation with him. We learn that the man is suicidal and says to Dae-su, "Even though I'm no worse than a beast, don't I have the right to live?". He then attempts to jump off the edge, but Oh Dae-su grabs his necktie, saving him from death. Dae-su tells the man to delay his death, because he wants to tell him his story, to which he utters "What?" The scene ends at the point in which the movie began.

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Movies - Oldboy

Plot

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