movie review old boy

Korea’s ‘Oldboy’ digs deeper than average mystery/thriller

Design for living: An unconventional sort of ménage à trois in "Oldboy."

A man gets violently drunk and is chained to the wall in a police station. His friend comes and bails him out. While the friend is making a telephone call, the man disappears from an empty city street in the middle of the night. The man regains consciousness in what looks like a shabby hotel room. A bed, a desk, a TV, a bathroom cubicle. There is a steel door with a slot near the floor for his food tray. Occasionally a little tune plays, the room fills with gas, and when he regains consciousness the room has been cleaned, his clothes have been changed, and he has received a haircut.

This routine continues for 15 years. He is never told who has imprisoned him, or why. He watches TV until it becomes his world. He fills one journal after another with his writings. He pounds the wall until his fists grow bloody, and then hardened. He screams. He learns from TV that his blood and fingerprints were found at the scene of his wife’s murder. That their daughter has been adopted in Sweden. That if he were to escape, he would be a wanted man.

“Oldboy,” by the Korean director Park Chanwook , watches him objectively, asking no sympathy, standing outside his plight. When, later, he does talk with the man who has imprisoned him, the man says: “I’m sort of a scholar, and what I study is you.”

In its sexuality and violence, this is the kind of movie that can no longer easily be made in the United States; the standards of a puritanical minority, imposed on broadcasting and threatened even for cable, make studios unwilling to produce films that might face uncertain distribution. But content does not make a movie good or bad — it is merely what it is about. “Oldboy” is a powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare.

The man, named Oh Dae-su ( Choi Min-Sik ), is a wretch when we first meet him, a drunk who has missed his little daughter’s birthday and now sits forlornly in the police station, ridiculously wearing the angel’s wings he bought her as a present. He is not a bad man, but alcohol has rendered him useless.

When he suddenly finds himself freed from his bizarre captivity 15 years later, he is a different person, focused on revenge, ridiculously responsive to kindness. Wandering into a restaurant, he meets a young woman who, he knows from the TV, is Korea’s “Chef of the Year.” This is Mido ( Gang Hye-Jung ). Sensing that he has suffered, feeling an instinctive sympathy, she takes him home with her, hears his story, cares for him, comes to love him. Meanwhile, he sets out on a methodical search to find the secret of his captivity. He was fed pot stickers, day after day, until their taste is burned into his memory, and he travels the city’s restaurants until he finds the one that supplied his meals. That is the key to tracking down his captors.

It is also, really, the beginning of the movie, the point at which it stops being a mystery and becomes a tragedy in the classical sense. I will not reveal the several secrets that lie ahead for Oh, except to say that they come not as shabby plot devices, but as one turn after another of the screws of mental and physical anguish and poetic justice. I can mention a virtuoso sequence in which Oh fights with several of his former jailers, his rage so great that he is scarcely slowed by the knife sticking in his back. This is a man consumed by the need for revenge, who eventually discovers he was imprisoned by another man whose need was no less consuming, and infinitely more diabolical.

I am not an expert on the Korean cinema, which is considered in critical circles as one of the most creative in the world (“Oldboy” won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2004). I can say that of the Korean films I’ve seen, only one (“The YMCA Baseball Club”) did not contain extraordinary sadomasochism. “Oldboy” contains a tooth-pulling scene that makes Laurence Olivier’s Nazi dentist in “ Marathon Man ” look like a healer. And there is a scene during which an octopus is definitely harmed during the making of the movie.

These scenes do not play for shock value, but are part of the whole. Oh has been locked up for 15 years without once seeing another living person. For him the close presence of anyone is like a blow to all of his senses. When he says in a restaurant, “I want to eat something that is alive,” we understand (a) that living seafood is indeed consumed as a delicacy in Asia, and (b) he wants to eat the life, not the food, because he has been buried in death for 15 years.

Why would Mido, young, pretty and talented, take this wretched man into her life? Perhaps because he is so manifestly helpless. Perhaps because she believes his story, and even the reason why he cannot reclaim his real name or identity. Perhaps because in 15 years he has been transformed into a man she senses is strong and good, when he was once weak and despicable. From his point of view, love is joined with salvation, acceptance, forgiveness and the possibility of redemption.

All of this is in place during the several scenes of revelation which follow, providing a context and giving them a deeper meaning. Yes, the ending is improbable in its complexity, but it is not impossible, and it is not unmotivated. “Oldboy” ventures to emotional extremes, but not without reason. We are so accustomed to “thrillers” that exist only as machines for creating diversion that it’s a shock to find a movie in which the action, however violent, makes a statement and has a purpose.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Gang Hye-Jung as Mido
Chi Dae-Han as No Joo-Hwan
Lee Seung-Shin as Yoo Hyung-Ja
Choi Min-Sik as Oh Dae-Su
Yoo Ji-Tae as Lee Woo-Jin
Oh Dal-Su as Park Cheol-Woong
Kim Byoung-Ok as Chief Guard (Mr Han)
Hwang Jo-Yun
Lim Joon-Hyung
Park Chanwook

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Tsuchiya Garon

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Oldboy Reviews

The messy, imperfect and chaotic nature of the action belies the precise choreography and consideration behind it.

Full Review | Dec 11, 2023

Oldboy is flashy, but there’s a moral and social disconnect between showing off Park’s undeniable chops and Choi Min-sik’s wild-haired, wild-eyed, poignant descent into madness.

Full Review | Sep 6, 2023

There’s a core element of emotional realism that accentuates Park’s brutal narrative beats, leaving us to ponder something more than a bloody body.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2023

It’s hard to think of any movie that's come out since (outside Park’s own oeuvre, at least) that so directly challenges audience’s expectations about revenge stories, and the value we expect them to carry.

Full Review | Aug 19, 2023

A wildly entertaining, twisted, gripping and exhilarating ride that deserves to be among the timeless crime thriller classics like <i>Seven</i>. See it on the largest screen possible. Be sure to skip the dumbed-down, forgettable remake by Spike Lee.

Given its highly stylish presentation, the unfolding mystery, several notable sequences, and a tremendous all-in lead performance from Choi Min-sik, it’s easy to see why the film has stood the test of time.

Full Review | Aug 18, 2023

When [Oh Dae-su] pieces it all together and finally sees himself reflected back, it is too much for him to bear. As he then tries to forget, the final shot of his shattered smile turning to silent laughter ensures we never will.

Full Review | Aug 17, 2023

There’s something viscerally uncomfortable about seeing what torment does to [Oh Dae-su] and what he becomes in the process.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2023

One of the most electrifying films you'll ever see.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 15, 2023

Visceral storytelling, told with rich visuals, impassioned style, and poetic purpose.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 20, 2022

All of that being said, I did get through the film. [But] I had big issues with it as I was watching it...

Full Review | Mar 29, 2021

Hailed as one of the top ten movies in the history of Asian cinema, it's hard to suggest Oldboy should not be on that list.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 14, 2021

Culminates in such outlandish morbidity that it's difficult to admire as a competent whole.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 9, 2020

A powerful and smart ode to tragedy, Park's film manages to provoke you, dishearten you, and thrill you.

Full Review | Aug 13, 2020

Oldboy still stands up as a modern revenge masterpiece, full of extreme violence and brutal shocks but with heart and a story that draws you in and keeps you invested with every twist and turn.

Full Review | Oct 13, 2019

Still holds up as a true tour de force that is just as fresh and hard-hitting in 2019 as it was upon its release 16 years ago.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Oct 4, 2019

Oldboy is so much more than an action film; it takes the viewer on a journey through a life destroyed, rebuilt and abolished once more. It teaches us lessons about consequences from our actions, the need to get revenge and find truth...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 10, 2019

Oldboy has more to offer than action and violence - it's an imaginative tale of guilt and revenge, with a shocking climax that will live long in the memory.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 5, 2019

When it was first released back in 2003 Park Chan-wook's Oldboy hit audiences like a hammer. Forget Spike Lee's 2013 US remake with Josh Brolin, this South Korean film is the only version of Oldboy that needs to be seen.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 3, 2019

Bold, brutal, bloody and brilliant

Full Review | Jul 31, 2019

Cast & crew

User reviews

A couple of answers that may be useful to understand this film better!!

Feb 11, 2008

Freaked me out

Genevieve_X
Jul 28, 2007

Absolutely Sublime.......................................................

Jan 1, 2007

A cinematic bad boy

Leofwine_draca
Sep 7, 2016

If only we were all living in Asia....

Dec 18, 2007

You Only Live Once...

Jan 21, 2022

Excellent in it's sickness

Jul 21, 2007

Korea's great gift to movie industry

Nov 14, 2016

Disturbing! But great.

Jun 12, 2021

Didn't like it much at all

Apr 23, 2005

Average revenge film with an extremely weak payoff

Thomas_Neville_Servo
Sep 29, 2004

One of most well-made films I've ever seen

Apr 20, 2007

weak plot does this one in

Jan 13, 2005

The sad spectacle of a sick mind

Apr 11, 2020

Pass by the "Boo" comments.

tetsuoisleet
Sep 5, 2007

Great film!

Mar 16, 2007

As good and disturbing as expected.

LeroyBrown-2
Feb 2, 2009

One step ahead of America

ryuakamrvengeance
Mar 6, 2007

A masterpiece for the cinema fanatics.

Feb 18, 2008

Amazing Movie

Aug 28, 2007

Revenge: a dish best eaten live?

Chris Knipp
Apr 10, 2005

Complex, challenging masterpiece that puts Hollywood to shame.

MrVibrating
Oct 19, 2007
Aug 1, 2005

A rather disappointing effort

Sep 28, 2004

One of the most gripping movies I have ever seen

LoneWolfAndCub
Mar 3, 2007

More from this title

More to explore, recently viewed.

A Still-Shocking Masterpiece Worth Catching in Theaters

Twenty years on, Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy has lost none of its ability to jar viewers.

This article contains spoilers for the ending of Oldboy .

Many movies with notorious twist endings—such as The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects —face a steep challenge on rewatch. The impact of the finale evaporates, or is at least blunted, by the viewer’s knowledge of what’s coming. A second viewing is largely an exercise in detecting the bread crumbs leading to the big surprise. When a rerelease of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy was announced for this summer, I wondered if it would suffer from the same limitations. Oldboy has one of the nastiest gut-punch cinematic conclusions I’ve ever seen. Twenty years on, would that be sustainable?

Back in the early aughts, when word of Oldboy first started to spread among American cineastes, Korean cinema was a few years into a flourishing renaissance led partly by Park, Bong Joon-ho, and Kim Ki-duk. Still, few projects had genuinely crossed over to the United States—Park’s prior film Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance played on a grand total of six screens in North America. Oldboy gained a little more steam, partly because of its success at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where a jury headed by Quentin Tarantino gave it the Grand Prix (the runner-up prize) and critics breathlessly noted its unusual intensity.

For young buffs like myself, Oldboy was best known as the movie where a man eats a live octopus on screen, or maybe the one where a man fights a hallway full of people armed only with a hammer. Its supposed extremity was the draw, a true jolt of excitement given that 2000s Hollywood was already starting to lean away from more challenging material as the superhero-franchise revival was beginning to take root. Indeed, all of Oldboy ’s gnarliest moments feel just as visceral now. But if shock value was the only thing propelling this movie, it wouldn’t be a widely heralded masterpiece rolling out in cinemas nationwide 20 years after its release.

Oldboy follows the businessman Oh Dae-su (played by Choi Min-sik), a drunken sot who is mysteriously kidnapped one day and held captive in a hotel room for 15 years, a psychological torture chamber where he learns he’s been framed for the murder of his wife. Just as mysteriously, he is suddenly released back into the real world, where he quickly embarks on a vengeful journey to find his captors and discover the reason for his imprisonment. He learns that his daughter was given up for adoption, and he forms an alliance with a chef named Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung), who seems almost inexplicably drawn to his wildness; they eventually become intimate, and together find the source of Dae-su’s woes: the wealthy and insane Lee Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae).

Read: Decision to Leave is this century’s first great erotic thriller

The film’s plot often feels neither here nor there—Dae-su, sporting a tangle of wiry hair and a permanent thousand-yard stare, is such a compelling and bizarre character that it barely matters who he’s after. Oldboy is mostly absorbing because of the intense anguish radiating off the screen at all times; Park’s ability to effectively communicate obsession, and put the audience in the head of someone who has almost entirely lost touch with his sense of self, feels unparalleled to this day. Oldboy was the middle entry in a loose Vengeance Trilogy , bookended by 2002’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and 2005’s Lady Vengeance , but the only element all three share is the sense of total discombobulation that accompanies a revenge quest, and the crooked line these paths always follow.

Much of Park’s early career saw him playing the role of provocateur. The Vengeance Trilogy is steeped in extreme violence, often breaching taboos avoided by U.S. and European cinema (in his movies, children are frequently in peril). Park’s breakout film, Joint Security Area , about a forbidden friendship between North and South Korean soldiers at the country’s border, dared to depict its North Korean characters with humanity; his 2009 vampire drama, Thirst , was the first mainstream Korean film to feature male full-frontal nudity. Of late, his work has blended provocation with more baroque storytelling and design elements; the period drama The Handmaiden and the cop thriller Decision to Leave both drew wide critical plaudits.

I love both of those recent films, but rewatching Oldboy in a theater is a good reminder of just how bluntly distressing Park’s movies used to be. So many of the “extreme” works of that era—the Saw films, Eli Roth’s Hostel —feel dated on rewatch. But there’s a core element of emotional realism that accentuates Park’s brutal narrative beats, leaving us to ponder something more than a bloody body. Part of Oldboy ’s resonance is due to the movie’s final, most devastating twist: the late revelation that Mi-do is Dae-su’s daughter, and that Woo-jin arranged their meeting and affair as revenge for Dae-su inadvertently exposing Woo-jin’s incestuous attachment to his own sister when they were in school together long ago.

It’s a laborious but somehow believable bit of Greek tragedy, a piece of information so mind-rending that Dae-su essentially begs for death upon learning it. It also makes the rewatch feel a thousand times more tragic, once the viewer knows how cursed Dae-su and Mi-do’s journey is from the start. The knowledge transforms an exciting if ruthless odyssey into something cruelly terrifying. Very few current movies can offer an experience like that, and it gives the rerelease a real power that’s worth tracking down in theaters.

About the Author

Choi Min-sik

Woo-jin lee, kang hye-jeong, kim byeong-ok, no joo-hwan, park cheol-woong, seung-shin lee, yoo hyung-ja, jin-seo yoon, tae-kyung oh, young dae-su, yoo yeon-seok, young woo-jin, young joo-hwan, young-hee lee, clock store lady, yeong-ae kim, elevator lady, dental nurse, jae-duk han, night teacher, jung ae kwak, nun teacher, electronics store owner, chae-soo jang, woo-jin's doctor, critic reviews.

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Oldboy: film review.

Spike Lee offers less ambiguity than Park Chan-wook's version of the famous manga, but doesn't skimp on viciousness and gore.

By THR Staff

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It would be unreasonable to expect Spike Lee ‘s Oldboy to deliver the disgusting thrill of Park Chan-wook ‘s 2003 original, an exquisitely harrowing work even its maker hasn’t yet been able to match. But the story of a man seeking revenge after being imprisoned for many years, drawn from a Japanese manga by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi , proves durable. Fans expecting an American version to water it down will discover that, while Lee leaves some of Park’s more memorable outrages behind, he and screenwriter Mark Protosevich find one or two ways to up the taboo-testing ante, small surprises that retain the tale’s edge without pushing into the realm of exploitation. The picture will do vastly better business than Lee’s last two features, Red Hook Summer and Miracle at St. Anna , though it is too vicious to reach the broad audience that embraced Inside Man .

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Oldboy (2003)

Review by Kambole Campbell @kambolecampbell

Directed by

Park Chan-wook

Choi Min-sik Kang Hye-jung Yoo Ji-tae

Anticipation.

Infamous for its tragic, perverse twist and general brutality.

And rightly so! A lurid, complex, introspective beast, enacting astonishing cruelty on its protagonist like a slow-acting poison.

In Retrospect.

Not quite Park Chan-wook’s greatest work, but more than earns its cult classic status.

Park Chan-wook’s revenge thriller mixes stylish thrills and perverse twists with a surprising amount of humour.

A film that for many has acted as a gateway to South Korean cinema, Oldboy , the second part of Park Chan-wook’s ‘Vengeance Trilogy’ is also his most infamous. Still revered today across all kinds of screen arts, its most famous sequence, a virtuoso single-take hallway fight, has inspired various imitators for well over a decade. But what makes Oldboy special is its consideration of the violence that it portrays – with each blow of the hammer, the film responds: “even though I am no better than a beast, don’t I have the right to live?”

Based on a manga of the same name, Oldboy is the story of Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), the film’s protagonist and victim. He’s introduced as an ordinary white-collar businessman, missing his daughter’s birthday after a night of drinking lands him at the police station. Shortly after being bailed out, he disappears without a trace, imprisoned for 15 years and then suddenly released with no explanation as to why, left with five days to find the answer.

His captivity brings a desire for revenge which turns out to be equal to that of his captor, who is just as violent and spiteful, but infinitely more sadistic. No definitive judgement is cast on whether or not Dae-su is a good man, Chung Chung-hoon’s camerawork observing him with almost impartial remove. As his captor says: “I’m sort of a scholar, and what I study is you”.

And so, we the audience join him in viewing his metamorphosis. This isn’t to say that Oldboy is a cold movie; if anything it’s highly emotive at every turn. A lot of care is put into creating Dae-su, as he changes into a beastly yet captivating agent of vengeance, then into someone who might actually have the hope of becoming a better human being.

The first act follows a fairly conventional revenge thriller template, with exhilarating fight scenes filmed with clarity and grit. But the violence is rarely satisfying. As the film moves into its final act, every bloody action is near unbearable – even though it’s mostly implied – as though it’s too great a horror to be seen. It’s also worth noting that it’s a far funnier film than its reputation would suggest, mixing tragedy and pitch-black humour from the jump.

The chief pleasure and horror of this film lies in Park’s slow twisting of the knife into Dae-su’s side, taking away any kind of temporary satisfaction with each new humiliation – the final turn being the most improbable and deliriously twisted. Fifteen years on, Oldboy has lost none of its capacity to shock and delight.

Published 29 Jul 2019

Tags: Choi Min-sik Park Chan-wook

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About Little White Lies

Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.

David Jenkins
Hannah Strong
Marina Ashioti
Laurène Boglio

Oldboy Review

15 Oct 2004

120 minutes

No doubt about it, OldBoy is all about extremity. You want torture? Try getting your head around the idea of being in solitary for 15 years. Violence? Check out the one-take corridor brawl in which psychologically ravaged Dae-su takes on a score of goons... with a claw-hammer.

You want to know how far someone could go to wreak revenge? Well, we advise you to brave South Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook's helter-skelter descent into the dingiest pit of human behaviour, even if at times it is tough going and ludicriously unfeasible.

As Empire viewed a pre-BBFC-scrutinised cut of the movie, the infamous live-octopus-eating scene remained intact; it's doubtful this truly stomach-churning moment will make it into UK cinemas. But there's plenty else to shock even without it - and all done with such unabashed verve that you'll be as compelled as you are repulsed.

OldBoy recalls Fincher in its CG-assisted flourishes and doomy themes, and Tarantino with its sharp-suited, stylised bloodletting. But it's unlikely either of those guys would ever be allowed to push it as far as Park has with this. Like we said, the word is extreme...

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IMAGES

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COMMENTS

Oldboy - Rotten Tomatoes
Dec 11, 2023 Full Review Armond White National Review Oldboy is flashy, but there’s a moral and social disconnect between showing off Park’s undeniable chops and Choi Min-sik’s wild-haired ...
Korea’s ‘Oldboy’ digs deeper than average mystery/thriller
Mar 24, 2005 · It is also, really, the beginning of the movie, the point at which it stops being a mystery and becomes a tragedy in the classical sense. I will not reveal the several secrets that lie ahead for Oh, except to say that they come not as shabby plot devices, but as one turn after another of the screws of mental and physical anguish and poetic justice.
Oldboy - Movie Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets
Oldboy (2003) - User reviews - IMDb
Old Boy is by turns idiotic, horrendous and senselessly violent. It lacks the glee of the most basic revenge film. Even Kill Squad did it better. Old Boy simply has no point to speak of. My question is: How did the director and scriptwriter screw up a revenge thriller? Old Boy is very reminiscent of Takashi Miike's far superior Ichi the Killer.
‘Oldboy’ Is Still Shocking - The Atlantic
Aug 21, 2023 · For young buffs like myself, Oldboy was best known as the movie where a man eats a live octopus on screen, or maybe the one where a man fights a hallway full of people armed only with a hammer ...
Old Boy (2003) Movie Review – A classic cult film reminiscent ...
Mar 6, 2023 · Old Boy (2003) is a high-octane revenge drama blended in a neo-noir action thriller genre, by auteur Park Chan-wook from South Korea. The film is the second instalment of Park’s The Vengeance Trilogy, preceded by Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and followed by Lady Vengeance (2005).
Oldboy Reviews - Metacritic
Mar 25, 2005 · Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is an ordinary Seoul businessman with a wife and little daughter who, after a drunken night on the town, is locked up in a strange, private "prison." No one will tell him why he's there or who his jailer is. The imprisonment last for 15 years until one day when Dae-su finds himself unexpectedly deposited on a grass-covered high-rise roof, determined to discover the ...
Oldboy: Film Review - The Hollywood Reporter
Nov 26, 2013 · Oldboy: Film Review. Spike Lee offers less ambiguity than Park Chan-wook's version of the famous manga, but doesn't skimp on viciousness and gore.
Oldboy (2003) review – More than earns its cult classic status
Jul 29, 2019 · Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies. Editorial. David Jenkins; Hannah Strong
Oldboy Review | Movie - Empire
Oct 14, 2004 · Oldboy Review One night, Dae-su (Choi) is locked up in a mysterious prison - with no idea why. After 15 torturous years, he's suddenly released and given a mobile phone, a designer suit and a ...

Korea’s ‘Oldboy’ digs deeper than average mystery/thriller

Roger Ebert

Based on the story by

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Oldboy Reviews

User reviews

A couple of answers that may be useful to understand this film better!!

Freaked me out

Absolutely Sublime.......................................................

A cinematic bad boy

If only we were all living in Asia....

You Only Live Once...

Excellent in it's sickness

Korea's great gift to movie industry

Disturbing! But great.

Didn't like it much at all

Average revenge film with an extremely weak payoff

One of most well-made films I've ever seen

weak plot does this one in

The sad spectacle of a sick mind

Pass by the "Boo" comments.

Great film!

As good and disturbing as expected.

One step ahead of America

A masterpiece for the cinema fanatics.

Amazing Movie

Revenge: a dish best eaten live?

Complex, challenging masterpiece that puts Hollywood to shame.

A rather disappointing effort

One of the most gripping movies I have ever seen

More from this title

A Still-Shocking Masterpiece Worth Catching in Theaters

About the Author

Choi Min-sik

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