| Oldboy | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Park Chan-wook |
| Produced by | Lim Seng-yong |
| Written by | Hwang Jo-yun Park Chan-wook Lim Chun-hyeong Lim Joon-hyung Garon Tsuchiya |
| Starring | Choi Min-sik Yu Ji-tae Kang Hye-jeong |
| Music by | Jo Yeong-wook |
| Cinematography | Chung Chung-hoon |
| Distributed by | Show East |
| Release date(s) | November 21, 2003 |
| Running time | 120 minutes |
| Country | South Korea |
| Language | Korean |
Oldboy (Hangul: 올드보이; RR: Oldeuboi; MR: Oldŭboi, the phonetic transliteration of "old boy") is a 2003 South Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook. It is based on the Japanese manga of the same name written by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya. Oldboy is the second installment of The Vengeance Trilogy, preceded by Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and followed by Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.
The film follows the story of one Oh Dae-su, who is locked in a hotel room for 15 years without knowing his captor's motives. When he is finally released, Dae-su finds himself still trapped in a web of conspiracy and violence. His own quest for vengeance becomes tied in with romance when he falls for an attractive sushi chef.
The film won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and high praise from the President of the Jury, director Quentin Tarantino. Critically, the film has been well received in the United States, with an 80% "Certified Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.[1] Film critic Roger Ebert has claimed Oldboy to be a "powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare".[2] In 2008, voters on CNN named it one of the ten best Asian films ever made.[3]
An American remake is being planned, which will be directed by Spike Lee. [4]
Contents |
Korean businessman Oh Dae-su is bailed out from a local police station by his close friend, Joo-Hwan, after a drunken fight, on the night of Dae-su's daughter's birthday. Dae-su calls her on a public phone, but as Joo-Hwan takes the phone, Dae-su disappears. Kidnapped and confined to a shabby room with no explanation, Dae-su is not allowed any contact and is fed only fried dumplings through a narrow slot. While watching a television, his only contact with the outside world, he discovers that his wife has been murdered, his daughter sent to foster parents and that he himself is the prime suspect. Experiencing hallucinations from the isolation, his attempts at suicide are prevented, and he is regularly being gassed into unconsciousness. Bent on revenge, he keeps himself fit and occupied with shadowboxing; hardening his knuckles by punching the wall. Over the years, he uses a chopstick to scratch an opening in the wall, hoping for a way to escape.
Shortly before his own escape plans can come to fruition, Dae-su is suddenly set free on the rooftop of a building, 15 years after his imprisonment began. Dae-su is given a cellphone by a stranger and goes to a local restaurant, where he meets young sushi chef Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), who brings him to her home. Dae-su realizes he is being tracked through phone calls from his unidentified captor and instant messaging on Mi-do's computer. Dae-su locates the Chinese restaurant that provided the fried dumplings during his imprisonment (following a scrap of paper found accidentally cooked into one, giving Dae-su the Chinese character "dragon" to go off of in his search) and then the building in which he was held captive, torturing the warden for information. He finds tape recordings of his captor that reveal little. He then fights his way out past numerous goons, suffering a knife wound to his back. When he collapses on the street, a stranger places him in a taxi, only to direct him to Mi-do's address and identify Dae-su by name.
The man, named Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae), reveals himself as Dae-su's kidnapper and tells him that Dae-su must discover his motives. Mi-do will die if he fails, but if he succeeds, Woo-jin will kill himself. Later, Dae-su and Mi-do grow emotionally closer together and have sex. Dae-su discovers he and Woo-jin briefly attended the same high school and remembers spying on Woo-jin's incestuous relationship with his sister, Soo-ah (Yun Jin-seo). Dae-su, unaware of their familial relationship, inadvertently spread the rumor before transferring to another school in Seoul. Soo-ah's mental turmoil grew, causing physical signs of pregnancy and her eventual suicide. During the investigation, Woo-jin kills Joo-Hwan for insulting Soo-ah, enraging Dae-su further.
Dae-su confronts Woo-jin at his penthouse with the information but instead Woo-jin gives Dae-su a photo album. As Dae-su flips through the album, he witnesses his daughter grow older in the pictures, until he discovers that Mi-do is actually his daughter. Woo-jin reveals that the events surrounding Dae-su were orchestrated to cause Dae-su and Mi-do to commit incest. It is also revealed that hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestion were involved with Dae-su's imprisonment and had been performed on Mi-do as well. A horrified Dae-su begs Woo-jin to conceal the secret from Mi-do, groveling for forgiveness before slicing out his own tongue and offering it to Woo-jin as a symbol of his silence. Woo-jin agrees to spare Mi-do from the knowledge and leaves Dae-su in his penthouse. As he rides alone in the elevator, he is struck by the vivid memory of his sister's death, in which he was complicit, and shoots himself in the head.
Dae-su sits in a winter landscape, where he makes a deal with the same hypnotist who conditioned him during his imprisonment, asking for her help to allow him to forget the secret. She reads his pleas from a handwritten letter and, touched by his words, begins the hypnosis process, lulling him into unconsciousness. Hours later, Dae-su wakes up, the hypnotist gone, and stumbles about before finally meeting with Mi-do. They embrace, and Mi-do tells Dae-su that she loves him, but whether Dae-su knows the secret is uncertain, as Dae-su smiles and his face slowly crumbles into one of anguish.
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 that was stabbed in Oh Dae-su's back, which was computer-generated imagery. Though the scene has often been compared visually to side scrolling beat 'em up video games, director Park Chan-wook has stated that the similarity was unintentional.
Other computer-generated imagery in the film includes the ant coming out of Oh Dae-su's arm (according to the making-of on the DVD the whole arm was computer-generated imagery) and the ants crawling over Oh Dae-su afterwards. The octopus being eaten alive was not computer-generated; four were used during the making of this scene. Actor Choi Min-sik, a Buddhist, said a prayer for each one. It should also be noted that the eating of live octopuses (called sannakji (산낙지) in Korean) as a delicacy exists in East Asia, although it is usually cut, not eaten whole. When asked if he felt sorry for the actor Choi Min-sik, director Park Chan-wook stated he felt more sorry for the octopus.
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 (included with the European release of the film) director Park Chan-Wook says that the ambiguous ending was deliberate and intended to generate discussion; it is completely up to each individual viewer to interpret what is unshown.
The motif phrase "laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone", from Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, is referenced several times throughout the film.
Oldboy received generally positive reviews from Western critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 80% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 125 reviews.[6] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 74 out of 100, based on 31 reviews.[7]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars (out of four). 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."[2] James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three stars (out of four), 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."[8]
Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com praised the film, calling it "anguished, beautiful, and desperately alive" and "a dazzling work of pop-culture artistry."[9] Peter Bradshaw gave it 5 stars (out of 5), commenting that this is the first movie 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."[10] 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."[11] 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."[12]
MovieGazette lists 10 features on its "It's Got" list for Oldboy and summarizes its review of Oldboy by saying, "Forget ‘The Punisher’ and ‘Man on Fire’ – this mesmerising revenger’s tragicomedy shows just how far-reaching the tentacles of mad vengeance can be." MovieGazette also comments that it "needs to be seen to be believed."[13] 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."[14] Manohla Dargis of the New York Times gave a lukewarm review, saying that "there is not much to think about here, outside of the choreographed mayhem."[15] J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader was also not impressed, saying that "there's a lot less here than meets the eye."[16] This film is ranked #18 in Empire magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.[17]
In South Korea, the film was seen by 3, 132, 000 filmgoers. (It ranks fifth place for the highest grossing film of 2003[18] and 44th in all-time national film box-office records.)
It grossed a total of US$14,980,005 worldwide.[19]
| Old Boy Original Motion Picture Soundtrack | |
|---|---|
| Soundtrack album | |
| Released | December 9, 2003 (South Korea) |
| Recorded | 2003 |
| Genre | Soundtrack |
| Length | 60:00 |
| Label | EMI Music Korea Ltd. |
Nearly all the music cues composed by Choi Seung-hyun, Lee Ji-Soo and Shim Hyun-Jung are titled after films, many of them film noirs.
Tartan Asian Extreme has released several editions of the film in Region One territories, including a single-disc edition, featuring the film and a small amount of special features.
A three-disc collector's edition has also been released, featuring:
Oldboy is also available on Blu-ray.
An American remake previously had director Justin Lin attached.[28] In November 2008, DreamWorks and Universal were securing the rights to the remake, which Will Smith has expressed interest in starring, with Steven Spielberg as director.[29] Mark Protosevich was in talks to write the script, although the acquisition to the remake rights were not finalized.[30] Smith has clarified Spielberg will not be remaking the film: he is adapting the manga itself,[31] which lacks the octopus-eating and incest invented for the film.[32]
In June 2009, the comic's publisher launched a lawsuit against the Korean film's producers for giving the film rights to Spielberg without their permission.[33] Later in November 2009, it was reported that DreamWorks, Steven Spielberg and Will Smith had stepped back from the project.[34] The producing team announced on 10 November 2009 that the project was dead.[35] On July 11, 2011, Mandate Pictures sent a press release stating that Spike Lee will direct a remake of Oldboy, with a screenplay written by Protosevich.[4] It has been reported that Josh Brolin will star in the remake as the lead character, while Christian Bale was reportedly in talks to portray the antagonist character[36], but it was later reported that Colin Firth had been offered the role.[37] Firth later passed on the role,[38] which was later offered to Clive Owen.[39]
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 Show East, the distributor of Oldboy, 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."[40]
| Book: The Vengeance Trilogy | |
| Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print. | |
| Preceded by Uzak |
Grand Prix, Cannes 2004 |
Succeeded by Broken Flowers |
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