Oldboy (2003 film)

Oldboy is a 2003 South Korean action-thriller film  directed and co-written by Park Chan-wook. A loose adaptation of the Japanese manga of the same name, the film follows the story of Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), who is imprisoned in a cell that resembles a hotel room for 15 years without knowing the identity of his captor or his captor's motives. When he is finally released, Dae-su finds himself still trapped in a web of conspiracy and violence as he seeks revenge against his enigmatic captor (Yoo Ji-tae). His quest becomes tied in with romance when he falls in love with a young sushi chef, Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung).

Oldboy attained critical acclaim and accolades worldwide, including winning the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where it garnered high praise from Quentin Tarantino, the president of the jury. In the United States, film critic Roger Ebert stated that 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 film's action sequences, particularly the single shot corridor fight sequence, also received commendation for their impressive execution.

The film's success led to two adaptations: an unauthorized Hindi remake in 2006 and an official American adaptation in 2013. As part of Park Chan-wook's The Vengeance Trilogy, it serves as the second installment, following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and preceding Lady Vengeance (2005).

The film is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time and has been included in numerous "best-of" lists by many publications. In 2008, Oldboy was placed 64th on an Empire list of the top 500 movies of all time. In 2020, The Guardian ranked it number 3 among the classics of modern South Korean Cinema.

Plot
In 1988, businessman Oh Dae-su is arrested for public drunkenness, causing him to miss his daughter's fourth birthday. After his friend Joo-hwan picks him up from the police station, Dae-su is kidnapped and awakens in a sealed hotel room, where food is delivered through a pet door, and the only form of diversion from his captivity is a television. From it, Dae-su learns that his wife has been murdered and that he has been framed as the prime suspect by his captors. As years of imprisonment pass, Dae-su grows deranged from solitude. He attempts suicide by slashing his wrists, but is kept alive by his captors. After this, Dae-su spends years practising martial arts against the solid wall and attempting to dig an escape tunnel so that he might seek vengeance upon his captors.

In 2003, 15 years into his imprisonment, Dae-su is suddenly released after being sedated and hypnotised. Dae-su awakens on a rooftop, where he meets a suicidal man. After he tests his fighting skills on a group of thugs, a mysterious beggar gives him money and a mobile phone. Dae-su enters a sushi restaurant where he encounters Mi-do, a young chef. Upon receiving a taunting phone call from his captor and consuming a live octopus, he collapses and is taken in by Mi-do. Dae-su attempts to rape Mi-do and then regretfully attempts to leave her apartment, but they reconcile and begin to form a bond. Once he has recovered, Dae-su tries to find his daughter but gives up after learning she was adopted following his kidnapping. Now focused on identifying his captors, Dae-su locates the Chinese restaurant where his prison food was prepared, then follows a deliveryman to find the hotel room.

Dae-su learns the hotel is a private prison where people pay to have others incarcerated. He tortures and interrogates the warden, Mr. Park Cheol-woong, who divulges that Dae-su was imprisoned for "talking too much". Park's guards attack Dae-su, and a fierce fight ensues in a corridor. Dae-su is stabbed but manages to defeat them all. His captor is then revealed to be wealthy businessman Lee Woo-jin, who gives Dae-su an ultimatum: If he can uncover the motive for his imprisonment within five days, Woo-jin will kill himself; otherwise, he will kill Mi-do. Dae-su and Mi-do grow closer and eventually have sex.

Joo-hwan contacts Dae-su with important information but is murdered by Woo-jin while they are on the phone. Dae-su recalls that he and Woo-jin attended the same high school, where he witnessed Woo-jin committing incest with his sister, Lee Soo-ah. Dae-su told Joo-hwan what he had seen, leading his classmates to gossip about Soo-ah. Soo-ah later committed suicide following a false pregnancy, leading a grief-stricken Woo-jin to seek revenge. In the present, Woo-jin cuts off Mr. Park's hand, so Park and his gang join forces with Dae-su. Dae-su leaves Mi-do with Mr. Park and sets out to face Woo-jin.

At his penthouse apartment, Woo-jin shows Dae-su a family album with photos of Dae-su, his wife, and his infant daughter together fifteen years earlier, progressing to pictures of his daughter as she grew up, which reveal that Mi-do is Dae-su's daughter. Woo-jin reveals that he orchestrated events through hypnosis to guide Dae-su to the restaurant so that he and Mi-do would fall in love, for Dae-su to experience the same pain of incest that he had. Woo-jin reveals Mr. Park is still working for him and threatens to tell Mi-do the truth. Dae-su desperately apologises for spreading the rumour that led to the death of Woo-jin's sister. Dae-su begs for Mi-do to be kept ignorant and debases himself by begging on all fours, acting like a dog, and licking Woo-jin's shoes. When Woo-jin is unmoved, Dae-su cuts out his tongue as an act of penance. Woo-jin finally accepts Dae-su's apology and instructs Mr. Park not to reveal the truth to Mi-do. He then drops what he claims to be the remote to his pacemaker and walks away. Dae-su activates the device in an attempt to kill Woo-jin, only to find it is the remote for a reel-to-reel tape recorder that plays an audio recording through large loudspeakers of Dae-su and Mi-do having sex. As Dae-su collapses in despair, Woo-jin enters the penthouse lift and, as he recalls his involvement in his sister's suicide, shoots himself in the head.

Sometime later, Dae-su locates the hypnotist and writes to her requesting that she erase the knowledge of Mi-do being his daughter so they can remain happy together. At first, she expresses how she did not feel the need to help him but was touched by a specific line in his letter, something said by the man on the rooftop where Dae-su was first released. The hypnotist guides Dae-su to envision the part of himself that knows the truth dying. Afterward, Mi-do finds Dae-su lying in the snow, but there is no sign of the hypnotist. Mi-do confesses her love for him, and the two embrace. Dae-su breaks into a broad smile, slowly replaced by a tortured grimace.

Cast

 * Choi Min-sik as Oh Dae-su, a businessman who seeks revenge after being held in a mysterious prison for 15 years. Choi Min-sik lost and gained weight for his role depending on the filming schedule, trained for six weeks, and did most of his own stunt work.
 * Oh Tae-kyung as young Dae-su.
 * Yoo Ji-tae as Lee Woo-jin, the man behind Oh Dae-su's imprisonment. Park Chan-wook's ideal choice for Woo-jin had been actor Han Suk-kyu, who previously played a rival to Choi Min-sik in Shiri and No. 3. Choi then suggested Yoo Ji-tae for the role, despite Park believing he was too young for the part.
 * Yoo Yeon-seok as young Woo-jin.
 * Kang Hye-jung as Mi-do, Dae-su's love interest.
 * Ji Dae-han as No Joo-hwan, Dae-su's friend and the owner of an internet café.
 * Woo Il-han as young Joo-hwan.
 * Kim Byeong-ok as Mr. Han, Woo-jin's bodyguard.
 * Yoon Jin-seo as Lee Soo-ah, Woo-jin's sister.
 * Oh Dal-su as Mr. Park Cheol-woong, warden of the private prison.
 * Oh Kwang-rok as Suicidal man.

Production
The corridor fight scene took seventeen takes in three days to perfect and was one continuous take; there was no editing of any sort except for the knife stabbed in Oh Dae-su's back, which was computer-generated imagery.

The script originally called for full male frontal nudity, but Yoo Ji-tae changed his mind after the scenes had been shot.

Other computer-generated imagery in the film includes the ant coming out of Dae-su's arm (according to the making-of feature on the DVD, the whole arm was CGI) and the ants crawling over him afterwards. The octopus being eaten alive was not computer-generated; four were used during the filming of this scene. The eating of squirming octopuses (called san-nakji (산낙지) in Korean) as a delicacy exists in East Asia, although it is usually killed and cut, not eaten whole and alive; the squirming is a result of postmortem nerve activity in the octopus' tentacles. When asked in DVD commentary if he felt sorry for Choi, director Park Chan-wook stated he felt more sorry for the octopuses.

The final scene's snowy landscape was filmed in New Zealand. The ending is deliberately ambiguous, and the audience is left with several questions: specifically, how much time has passed, if Dae-su's meeting with the hypnotist really took place, whether he successfully lost the knowledge of Mi-do's identity, and whether he will continue his relationship with Mi-do. In an interview with Park (included with the European release of the film), he says that the ambiguous ending was deliberate and intended to generate discussion; it is completely up to each individual viewer to interpret what is not shown.

Soundtrack
Nearly all the music cues that are composed by Shim Hyeon-jeong, Lee Ji-soo and Choi Seung-hyun are titled after films, many of them film noirs.


 * Track listing

Box office
In South Korea, the film was seen by 3,260,000 filmgoers and ranks fifth for the highest-grossing film of 2003.

Oldboy grossed a total of US$17,052,444 worldwide.

20th anniversary re-release
The film was theatrically re-released in the United States by NEON for its 20th anniversary on 16 August 2023, remastered in 4K, featuring bonus commentary by Park Chan-wook.

Critical response
Oldboy received critical acclaim, and is considered an influential cult classic. Praise was also given to the film's action sequences, specifically highlighting the "all-timer" single shot hallway fight sequence. As per the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 159 reviews, with an average rating of 7.40 out of 10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Violent and definitely not for the squeamish, Park Chan-Wook's visceral Oldboy is a strange, powerful tale of revenge." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, with 82% positive reviews based on 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars. Ebert remarked: "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." James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three out of four stars, saying that it "isn't for everyone, but it offers a breath of fresh air to anyone gasping on the fumes of too many traditional Hollywood thrillers."

Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com praised the film, calling it "anguished, beautiful, and desperately alive" and "a dazzling work of pop-culture artistry." Peter Bradshaw gave it 5/5 stars, commenting that this is the first time in which he could actually identify with a small live octopus. Bradshaw summarizes his review by referring to Oldboy as "cinema that holds an edge of cold steel to your throat." David Dylan Thomas points out that rather than simply trying to "gross us out", Oldboy is "much more interested in playing with the conventions of the revenge fantasy and taking us on a very entertaining ride to places that, conceptually, we might not want to go." Sean Axmaker of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave Oldboy a score of "B−", calling it "a bloody and brutal revenge film immersed in madness and directed with operatic intensity," but felt that the questions raised by the film are "lost in the battering assault of lovingly crafted brutality."

Jamie Russell of the BBC movie review calls it a "sadistic masterpiece that confirms Korea's current status as producer of some of the world's most exciting cinema." In 2019 on The Hankyoreh, Kim Hyeong-seok said that Oldboy was the 'zeitgeist of the vigorous Korean cinema in early 2000s', and a 'boiling point that led history of Korean cinema to new state'. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called the film "a trivial genre movie," writing, "The fact that Oldboy is embraced by some cinephiles is symptomatic of a bankrupt, reductive postmodernism: one that promotes a spurious aesthetic relativism (it's all good) and finds its crudest expression in the hermetically sealed world of fan boys." J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader was also not impressed, saying that "there's a lot less here than meets the eye."

The film is regarded as one of the best films ever made and has been included in numerous "best-of" lists by many publications. In 2008, Oldboy was placed 64th on an Empire list of the top 500 movies of all time. The same year, voters on CNN named it one of the ten best Asian films ever made. It was ranked #18 in the same magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. In a 2016 BBC poll, critics voted the film the 30th greatest since 2000. In 2020, The Guardian ranked it number 3 among the classics of modern South Korean Cinema.

Oedipus the King inspiration
Park Chan-wook stated that he named the main character Oh Dae-su "to remind the viewer of Oedipus." In one of the film's iconic shots, Yoo Ji-tae, who played Woo-jin, strikes an extraordinary yoga pose. Park Chan-wook said he designed this pose to convey "the image of Apollo." It was Apollo's prophecy that revealed Oedipus' fate in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. The link to Oedipus Rex is only a minor element in most English-language criticism of the movie, while Koreans have made it a central theme. Sung Hee Kim wrote "Family seen through Greek tragedy and Korean movie – Oedipus the King and Old Boy." Kim Kyungae offers a different analysis, with Dae-su and Woo-jin both representing Oedipus. Besides the theme of unknown incest revealed, Oedipus gouges his eyes out to avoid seeing a world that despises the truth, while Oh Dae-su cuts off his tongue to prevent the truth from being revealed.

More parallels with Greek tragedy include how Lee Woo-jin is portrayed as akin to an immortal Greek god while Oh Dae-su is merely an aged mortal. Lee Woo-jin looks young compared to Oh Dae-su, though they are supposed to be contemporaries at school. Throughout the movie Lee Woo-jin is portrayed as an obscenely rich young man who lives in a lofty tower and is omnipresent due to having listening devices planted on Oh Dae-Su and others, which furthers the parallel between his character and the secrecy of Greek gods.

Mi-do, throughout the movie, comes across as a strong-willed, young and innocent girl, and has been compared to Sophocles' Antigone, Oedipus' daughter. Though Antigone does not commit incest with her father, she remains faithful and loyal to him, similar to how Mi-do reunites with Oh Dae-Su and takes care of him in the wilderness (cf. Oedipus at Colonus). Another interesting character is the hypnotist, who, apart from being able to hypnotise people, also has the power to make people fall in love (e.g. Dae-Su and Mi-do), which is characteristic of the power of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, whose classic act is to make Paris and Helen fall in love before and during the Trojan War.

Park Chan-wook's Focus on the Irrational
Park Chan-wook has said there is a deep influence from author Franz Kafka in this movie, and that this provides the absurdity and surrealism. In interviews, Park Chan-wook has also spoken about his movies "portraying something irrational: a phenomenon that cannot be explained logically. A portrait of humanity as neither good nor evil but rather as a complex existence." This is not only evident in Oldboy but also other movies made by Park and Bong Joon-ho. For example, Parasite, Memories of Murder, Oldboy, and Decision to Leave do not contain archetypal good characters. There is no moral protagonist for the audience to follow. Korean Studies professor and cultural critic David Tizzard has described this as a quality of Asian cinema: "Gone are the simple ideas of good and evil. Erased are the ideas of a moral protagonist and their immoral antagonist. But because they are not good, or at least defined as such by their creators, they become something much larger, realer, and more complete than the archetypes we are spoon-fed elsewhere."

Home media
In the United Kingdom, the film was watched by 300,000 television viewers on Channel 4 in 2011. This made it the year's most-watched foreign-language film on a non-BBC television channel in the UK.

Bollywood controversy
Zinda, the Bollywood film directed by writer-director Sanjay Gupta, also bears a striking resemblance to Oldboy but is not an officially sanctioned remake. It was reported in 2005 that Zinda was under investigation for violation of copyright. A spokesman for original distributor Show East said, "If we find out there's indeed a strong similarity between the two, it looks like we'll have to talk with our lawyers." Show East had already sold the film's rights to DreamWorks in 2004, and initially expressed legal concerns but no legal action was taken as the studio had shut down.

American remake
Steven Spielberg originally intended to produce a remake starring Will Smith in 2008. He commissioned screenwriter Mark Protosevich to adapt the screenplay. Spielberg pulled out in 2009.

An official remake directed by Spike Lee was released on 27 November 2013. 39 percent of critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were positive for the remake.