 |
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Oldboy/ Old Boy (18)
© Egg Pictures - all rights reserved |
| |
|
|
| |
 |
| Tookey's Rating |
|
|
4
/10 |
| |
| Average Rating |
|
|
7.50
/10 |
| |
| Starring |
Choi Min-sik  , Yu Ji-Tae, Kang Hye-jeong
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Directed by:
Chanwook Park
Written by:
Hwang Jo-yun, Lim Chun-hyeong, Park Chan-wook, based on a manga comic strip by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi
|
|
| |
|
| |
 |
| |
| Released: |
2003 |
| |
|
| Genre: |
COMIC STRIP
OVERRATED
FOREIGN
THRILLER
|
| |
|
| Origin: |
Korea |
| |
|
| Colour: |
C |
| |
|
| Length: |
120 |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
A kidnap victim Dae-su (Choi Min-sik, pictured right) seeks revenge after being locked up for 15 years by an anonymous enemy. |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
|
| Oldboy contains the expected ingredients of Korean “extreme cinema” – an incoherent storyline, acting that swings between the deadpan and the hysterically melodramatic, and characters so blank that it's hard to feel anything for them. | | There’s plenty of the obligatory nastiness too – tongue-slitting, skull-hammering, dental torture and (worst of all) the consumption on camera of a live, wriggling octopus. If your gag reflex can survive such excesses – it’s easy to see Quentin Tarantino’s influence on this winning the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival - there’s a reasonably ingenious denouement, centred on brother-sister incest, that is reminiscent of 17th century Jacobean revenge drama at its crudest. | | Oldboy has moments of shock and erotic tension, and director Chanwook Park displays the visual flair that won him admirers among the pseudo-sophisticated for his Seeking Mr Vengeance; but I found it a very long, hard slog, bringing no emotional reward. | |
|
|
|
|
|
