Park Chan-wook’s revenge thriller is gripping and distressing, with Choi Min-sik giving its cruelty a human cost. The elaborate plotting sometimes strains belief, but the performances and precise staging make it worth the discomfort.
Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy is an excellent revenge thriller whose plotting sometimes demands more belief than we can supply. Oh Dae-su has endured fifteen years of imprisonment and has five days for vengeance. That ought to promise the familiar satisfaction of watching a wronged man settle accounts, with each injury bringing us closer to feeling that justice has been done. Park Chan-wook makes the violence exciting, then gives us reasons to feel uncomfortable about having enjoyed it.
Choi Min-sik gives Oh Dae-su the force the premise needs. There is anger here, but also enough distress to keep us from relaxing into the pleasure of watching a man lash out. Yu Ji-tae’s Lee Woo-jin offers a cooler, more controlled presence, welcome beside all that anguish. Kang Hye-jung gives Mi-do a warmth the film needs, without making her seem to belong in a gentler story.
The corridor fight explains much of the film’s appeal and its discomfort. Chung Chung-hoon’s cinematography presents it in one sustained take, so there is no succession of cuts to relieve the effort of watching. Editors Kim Jae-beom and Kim Sang-bum let the passage run, making the violence feel exhausting even as we admire its staging. We were gripped, then queasy, because the fight keeps going after the pleasure of its ingenuity has begun to wear off.
Ryu Seong-hie’s production design earns its place in that sequence by making the corridor’s restrictions matter to the action. The confined space gives the violence a physical limit, and the film gets more from that limit than it could from a bigger arena. Music is credited to Lee Ji-soo, Cho Young-wuk, Choi Seung-hyun and Shim Hyun-jung; its emotional insistence suits performances that are already this exposed. At times the score presses too hard, but restraint would hardly suit what we are watching.
The weakness lies in the screenplay, credited to Park Chan-wook, Im Joon-hyung and Hwang Jo-yun. Its elaborate revenge story asks us to accept an improbable degree of control over other people’s actions. We can forgive a thriller a contrivance, but there are moments when the characters seem to be following instructions from the writers rather than responding to one another. The acting gets us through those passages without making them convincing.
For all those improbabilities, the film has thought about the violence it shows. Revenge thrillers often depend on our wanting the next injury to happen, and Oldboy makes that wish increasingly unpleasant. The early sight of Oh Dae-su eating a live octopus is difficult to watch because his appetite feels desperate, and Choi Min-sik will not make that desperation attractive. It matters beyond its ability to shock because it makes the man himself harder to regard comfortably.
The 18 certificate deserves to be taken seriously. We recommend Oldboy strongly to anyone willing to tolerate some elaborate plotting in return for filmmaking that can make violence feel this troubling. Do not make it the compromise choice for a sofa divided over screen violence.
