Oldboy(올드보이)

Name: Oldboy
Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Korea · 2003
Rated R · 2h 0m
Director Park Chan-wook
Starring Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung, Kim Byung-ok
Genre Action, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Oh Dae-su is imprisoned, drugged, and tortured in a cell for 15 years without any idea as to why. Upon his release, the desperate businessman seeks to uncover the plot and take revenge on his captors. He realizes that he only has five days to do so.

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What are people saying?

Pico Banerjee

You can't talk about the modern action movie, or the rising prominence of South Korean cinema, without mentioning Park Chan-wook and Oldboy. At turns entertaining, confusing, and by the end, deeply disturbing, Oldboy is the kind of movie that if someone lent you on DVD, you should keep forever. I'm not one to advocate theft, but Oldboy really is just that good. Now stop questioning the moral ambiguity of this review, and watch it for yourself.

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What are critics saying?

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

Oldboy has the fatal air of wanting so desperately to be a cult movie that it forgets to present itself as a coherent one.

Variety by Derek Elley

A wild, intensely cinematic ride into two men's burning desire to get even.

Premiere by Glenn Kenny

Once the picture gets into Hollywood's bloodstream, it could well prove to be as influential as John Woo's 1989 crime thriller, "The Killer."

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Regardless of how you look at Oldboy, it's unlike anything you are likely to have seen before.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

Oldboy caused a love-it-or-hate-it stir at Cannes last year, and how could it not: It's an onslaught made to cause a sensation. Consider me simultaneously jolted and depressed.

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

Whatever its oversteps and excesses (I do think Park ran a little amok with the computer gimcrackery), Oldboy has the bulldozing nerve and full-blooded passion of a classic.

100

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

It's a movie of such jaw-dropping violence, wild improbability and dazzling style it overpowers all resistance.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

As always with Park Chanwook, you just hold on and let him rip.

L.A. Weekly by Scott Foundas

Put simply, in my humble opinion, Oldboy sucks.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

The result is a powerfully visceral experience that justifies itself almost entirely on surface chops, with striking color composition and a complex sound design that elevates the story to an operatic scale.