movie review old boy

Extremely Grotesque: Park Chan-wook on Oldboy

In the 20 years since it was first released, Park Chan-wook ’s “Oldboy” has lost none of its ability to provoke and enthrall, none of its potency as a work of art that deploys graphic violence and equally visceral style to probe the depths of human nature.

The masterpiece that propelled South Korean cinema onto a world stage and solidified Park’s status as one of its most ferociously original auteurs, “Oldboy” won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, with jury president Quentin Tarantino personally advocating on the film’s behalf. A critical and commercial success, the film shocked stateside audiences with its savage beauty and delirious, psychological dimension; in his four-star review , Roger Ebert called “Oldboy” a “powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare.”

Adapted from Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi ’s manga, Park’s neo-noir saga centers on Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), a man kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years by a mysterious tormentor, only to be released one day without explanation. Desperate to discover the identity and motivation of the man who stole his life, Dae-su embarks on a path of revenge that leads him into a strange and terrible maze of conspiracy.

Tumbling out of a red suitcase onto a rooftop garden, devouring a live octopus at a sushi bar, and facing down a hallway of thugs with the help of a claw-tooth hammer in one legendary sequence after another, Dae-su’s odyssey plunges him through Seoul’s seedy underworld and eventually nears a revelatory, annihilative confrontation. As it does, Park—with his transcendent visual style and obsessive eye for detail—masterfully orchestrates the story’s twisting descent into a tragedy of mythic proportions.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of its original South Korean release, Neon is re-releasing “Oldboy” in theaters, starting August 16; the film was originally distributed in the U.S. by Tartan Films USA. To mark the occasion, Park personally supervised a digital restoration and remastering of the film in 4K HDR.

Ahead of “Oldboy” returning to theaters, Park told RogerEbert.com about his involvement in the restoration and remastering process, how growing up in Seoul under the rule of dictator Chun Doo-hwan informed his artistic interests, and which line of dialogue he considers “the key” to unlocking the long-abiding mystery of “Oldboy.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

In restoring and remastering “Oldboy,” which you made 20 years ago, were you trying to stay true to the film’s original intent—and to who you were when you made it—or did the film transform as you returned to it from a different perspective at this stage of your life and career?

Although 20 years may not be a very long time in the lifespan of a work of art, it can be seen as such because “Oldboy” is from an era where movies were shot and screened on film. There’s nothing that was specially added to this remastered version. All I did was strive to relive the days when movies were screened on film and try to create the most pristine version possible. We would have corrected the color digitally in the present but, back then, we developed the film using the bleach bypass method. In other words, we physically treated the film negatives. The results aren’t as vivid and crisp as movies of today because of this, despite the fact it was a remastering. It’s very grainy with high contrast and low saturation. This doesn’t align with my aesthetic sensibilities as of today. However, this is in itself a record of that particular era.

I wanted to ask about two scenes in particular: the scene where Choi Min-sik’s Oh Dae-su eats a live octopus, and the corridor fight scene in which Oh Dae-su wields a hammer against a group of attackers. What do you remember most strongly about filming both of those sequences? In revisiting “Oldboy,” has your relationship to those scenes changed at all; do you perceive them differently?

The response from international audiences that took me aback the most was regarding the live octopus scene. From the start, I had a very clear idea as to what food Dae-su, who has not had contact with any living entity for 15 years, would want to eat first. He would furiously gnaw on a wriggling mass of life and swallow it. This idea is where Dae-su’s line, “I’m going to chew it all down,” came from.

The food that applies to this concept, as a Korean, is obviously live octopus. But I hadn’t thought about how non-Korean audiences would react. It ended up being an extremely grotesque scene. There are actually many Koreans who can’t stomach live octopus. And even if you do eat it, you would never eat it whole like in the film. It is likely a very dangerous act. You can even choke to death. There was even a real murder case where someone killed their lover in this manner. I really hope there aren’t any Americans who think Koreans would just put a large, live octopus in their mouths.

What entertains me most about the hallway scene now is the bald, shirtless thug with the potbelly. That’s Mr. Heo Myeong Haeng. He might have been just one of dozens of stuntmen back then, but in the past 20 years, he has become Korea’s leading stunt coordinator and a film director in his own right with two features under his belt. He made the hallway scene in “Oldboy” twice as exciting with his unmatched performance, for which he deserves all the credit.

Choi Min-sik’s performance in “Oldboy” is more impressive to me every time I revisit the film. Can you discuss what drew you to him as an actor and any favorite memory of working with him on this film?

He was already a top-class actor in Korea before shooting “Oldboy.” He was the pillar of the industry, alongside Song Kang-ho, with whom he was always compared. If Song Kang-ho is ice and modern, Choi Min-sik is fire and classical. He is in appearance a hero but seems like a jokester at the same time. He’s not a calculating personality. He is a passionate person who will charge forward, come hell or high water, if he thinks something is right. This means he is that pure.

I wanted to ask about the colors of “Oldboy,” its sickly greens and fluorescent purples, its splashes of red. What was your approach to the color correction process for this restoration, given the film’s strong contrasts and low saturation levels?

I was unrestrained in my usage of bold colors during the shooting stage. I was able to make this decision because we had done plenty of tests using bleach bypass during pre-production. If the subject is already faint in color, then there’s the possibility it’ll appear almost monotone after bleach bypass. If you put bold primary colors through bleach bypass, you get this strange and unfamiliar tone. I tried very hard to preserve this effect while remastering the film.

While vengeance and its futility are major themes in your work, and extreme violence one way those ideas are expressed in “Oldboy,” the film also explores the possibility of catharsis and redemption. Looking back, why were these ideas important to you when you made “Oldboy”?

It’s likely because of my friends, seniors, and juniors who rose up and fought the military dictatorship while we were in college. I was weak and a coward and so couldn’t actively fight, and the brave ended up being the ones sacrificed to this intense violence. That was when I became interested in themes such as guilt, vengeance, and redemption.

“Oldboy” features many allusions to classical mythology, from the name Oh Dae-su reminding the audiences of Oedipus, to Lee Woo-jin, played by Yoo Ji-tae, assuming a Yoga pose as if he’s a religious deity. Why was this mythological quality important to the story you wanted to tell?

Revenge is a very classical and mythological story subject. So is incest.

Because I’d already dealt with the division of the Korean peninsula in “Joint Security Area (JSA)” and class conflict within South Korea in “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” I didn’t want to handle yet another timely social issue in my next work. I wanted to tell a story that was more foundational, primordial, and universal. And I wanted to go romanticist, rather than realistic. I wanted to tell a story about fate.

You began collaborating with screenwriter Chung Seo-kyung after “Oldboy,” and you have continued working together for 20 years. How has it felt to revisit “Oldboy,” which was made before that collaboration, and did Chung have any effect on the restoration and remaster?

After making “JSA,” “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” and “Oldboy” back-to-back, I began to repent, having only created stories that pushed women to the periphery. She was who I recruited as a result. As you are aware, the films and series I’ve made since are all centered around women. Even the works that she is not involved in. That’s how much of an influence she has had on me. However, because “Oldboy” is a pre-Chung work, she did not participate in the remastering.

One of the most enduring lines of dialogue in “Oldboy” comes from Lee Woo-jin, who says, “You can’t find the right answer if you ask the wrong questions.” This idea is important in many of your films, and so I wanted to close this interview by asking about the influence “Oldboy” has had on you as a filmmaker. How has it influenced the questions that you wish to ask through your filmmaking, or led you toward certain answers?

That’s correct — that line of dialogue is the key. If anyone were to regard “Oldboy” as holding some important place in the history of mystery stories, it’d be because of that line. This was not a mystery that could be solved by obsessing over the question, “Why was I imprisoned?” It’s only when you change the question to, “Why was I released when I could have been imprisoned for life?” that you can reach the thought, “Then, why was I released after exactly 15 years?” and, “What takes 15 years to achieve?” before ultimately coming to the conclusion that’s how long it takes for Mi-do, [played by Kang Hye-jung ,] to become an adult.

Life is the same. How many enigmas stay unsolved because we are asking the wrong question? When the answer is hard to figure out, let us try changing the question and asking anew.

“Oldboy” returns to theaters in a new 4K restoration and remaster, via Neon, on August 16.

Isaac Feldberg

Isaac Feldberg is an entertainment journalist currently based in Chicago, who’s been writing professionally for nine years and hopes to stay at it for a few more.

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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

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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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After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must track down his captor in five days. After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must track down his captor in five days. After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must track down his captor in five days.

Park Chan-wook
Garon Tsuchiya
Nobuaki Minegishi
Choi Min-sik
Kang Hye-jeong
1.2K User reviews
321 Critic reviews
78 Metascore
40 wins & 28 nominations

Top cast 53

Woo-jin Lee

No Joo-hwan
(as Dae-han Ji)

Park Cheol-woong
(as Dal-su Oh)

Yoo Hyung-ja
(as Seung-Shin Lee)

Young Dae-su
(as Tae-kyung Oh)

Young Woo-Jin
(as Ahn Yeon-Seok)
Young Joo-hwan
Clock Store Lady
Elevator Lady
Dental Nurse
Night Teacher
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Electronics Store Owner
Woo-jin's Doctor
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Trivia (at around 27 mins) Four live octopodes were eaten for the scene with Dae-su in the sushi bar, a scene which provoked some controversy abroad. Eating live octopus in Korea is commonplace although it is usually sliced first. When the film won the Grand Prix at Cannes, the director thanked the octopodes along with the cast and crew.
Goofs (at around 1h 7 mins) When Mi-do is searching through the Internet for the word "Evergreen", you can see that the high school website already has been visited on that computer because the link is highlighted in purple colors.

Woo-jin Lee : Remember this: "Be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they sink as the same."

Alternate versions Park Chan-wook stated on his solo DVD commentary that there is an edited version for television broadcast. It omits some of the more extreme violence and the love scene between Oh Dae Su and Mi-do.
Connections Edited into 365 Days, also Known as a Year (2019)
Soundtracks Bring My Love by Starsailor

User reviews 1.2K

Jan 21, 2022
How long is Oldboy? Powered by Alexa
If this film is part of a trilogy, how important is it that the three be seen in order?: Can you watch any one of the three without confusion?
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November 21, 2003 (South Korea)
South Korea
Official site (Russia)
Cinco días para vengarse
Busan, South Korea
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$3,000,000 (estimated)
Mar 27, 2005
$17,542,965

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours
Dolby Digital
Dolby Surround 7.1
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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

Old Boy (2003) Movie Review – A classic cult film reminiscent of Greek tragedies

A classic cult film reminiscent of greek tragedies.

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).

The film is not a typical entertainer – it’s not light viewing and definitely not for the squeamish or the soft-hearted as it ventures into the realm of a taboo subject and is liberally peppered with violence and gore.

What this film is, is a deeply profound and thought-provoking piece of cinema. It’s a classic and has gained cult status over the years. It was lauded by critics worldwide and received numerous awards including the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and was praised by the jury president, noted filmmaker, Quentin Tarantino.

Oh Dae-su, played brilliantly by veteran actor, Choi Min-sik is a regular middle-class person. Fond of his drinks, he gets a tad inebriate and finds himself at the local police station. Never mind, if it’s his little daughter’s birthday. It’s quite late in the night when his friend, No Joo-hwan (Ji Dae-han) bails him out.

They stop by a phone booth to wish Dae-su’s girl but when Joo-hwan turns, there’s no sign of the man. It’s as if Oh Dae-su has simply disappeared from the face of the earth,

Dae-su finds himself incarcerated in a private prison cell, more akin to a seedy hotel room with nothing but television to give him company for the next 15 years and no explanation. Similarly, he is one day suddenly freed and he has 5 days to find the answer to all his burning questions or else…

The film delves into the theme of vengeance but does not glorify it. It’s about a man, taken away from his family and placed in a hellish situation for no seeming fault of his. The initial anger and affront, gradually give way to philosophical assessment and a certain level of tolerance. Dae-su asks himself if he could have endured his captivity better if he had known the reason.

He starts writing, a sort of autobiography of his deeds, a confessional, achieving a certain level of self-analysis, wrought by years of solitary existence. He writes about all the people he has hurt or wronged and realizes that while he thought he had lived an average life, he has sinned quite a lot.

But 15 years of solitary confinement is a long time for any person to lose track of human empathy. A series of sequences show that our man has gone unhinged. Oh Dae-su has sort of, come back from the dead. Social propriety, patience and compassion have been overshadowed by a volcano of rage, fuelled by the overwhelming desire for vengeance. There’s a pearl of folk wisdom – beware of the man who’s lost his sense of shame and fear of death.

The one interesting aspect of this film is its unpredictability and its ability to send a deeper shock wave with every segment. And each segment leads to a newer set of questions.

And interestingly, his release from his private prison does not mean that he has been liberated. Oh Dae-su realizes that he’s just been put in a bigger prison and is constantly under surveillance. He’s more like a puppet on a string, manipulated into doing the bidding of his depraved and deranged captor. In fact, his release from his private cell puts him in an even deeper level of hell.

There are shades of Greek tragedies in Old Boy, and the name Oh Dae-su is reminiscent of the famous classical Greek character of Oedipus Rex (watch Old Boy to find the connection). Keeping in line with the Greek theme, the character of Lee Woo-jin (portrayed by the enigmatic Yoo Ji-tae), the captor is probably reminiscent of the Greek God, Apollo, handsome, strong, and radiant.

He looks much younger and stronger than Oh Dae-su even though are the same age. Woo-jin is rich and powerful, lives in the heavens (a high-rise establishment) and is all-knowing. In other words, he has Oh Dae-su under constant surveillance. Lee Woo-jin is the classic antagonist with a soul darker than hell.

Due to an incident in school for which he is solely responsible but unable to bear the guilt, he finds a convenient scapegoat in Oh Dae-su. Oh Dae-su, on the other hand, is (more or less) blameless and destroyed for no fault of his own. But he is human and his desire for revenge makes it his fatal flaw just like the heroes of Greek tragedies.

The film sees his metamorphosis from a loudmouth, lovable, harmless rascal to a silent, vicious fighter, with a single-point agenda to not only seek the answers to his questions but also get revenge for his sufferings.

Later, when Oh Dae-su does find all the answers to his queries, is very much in love with Mi-do and happily living with her, she gives him sage counsel — to stop his revenge on Woo-jin and start a new life somewhere far away. Had he listened to her, he would not have found himself totally stripped of all dignity and humanity in the end.

The film explores the human psyche and man’s natural thirst for revenge when wronged. Both Lee Woo-jin and Oh Dae-su are driven by vengeance as both believe they are the victim. In actual fact, revenge is one of the main reasons for violence throughout human history.

And Old Boy shows how this unbridled thirst can utterly destroy oneself. Whether one gets their revenge or not is not the issue, the degradation is so complete, they can never regain their humanity. The only antidote to the poison of revenge is forgiveness.

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Common Sense Says
Parents Say 10 Reviews
Kids Say 11 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Great but extremely brutal, vicious revenge story.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 17+?

Extreme violence includes fistfights, a hammer fight, shooting sprees. A severed

Focuses on two incestuous relationships: one between a father and his daughter,

Frequent use (in English subtitles) of "f--k," "s--t," "motherf----r," "a--hole,

A character is very drunk in one scene. Character sprayed with Valium gas every

Any Positive Content?

All cast members are South Korean. Male leads are complex characters, but women

Invading the privacy of others may backfire on you. But the film has more negati

Dae-su stops drinking and trains hard as he learns to fight, but it's for the ne

Violence & Scariness

Extreme violence includes fistfights, a hammer fight, shooting sprees. A severed hand is shown. Characters pull teeth from each other's mouths, punch a wall with bloody fists, cut off their own tongue. Multiple deaths via suicide. A news report discusses stab wounds on a murder victim. A man falls from a roof onto a car and dies. A man eats a live octopus and ants burrow through skin. Sexual violence includes a woman tied up, bare breasts shown, the film implying that men have touched her breasts against her will. A teen brother takes off his teen sister's underwear and bra without her clear consent. Another incestuous relationship between a father and his daughter.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Focuses on two incestuous relationships: one between a father and his daughter, the other between teen siblings. The father and daughter have sustained, graphic sex; breasts and bottoms shown. A long flashback depicts a brother undressing his sister and kissing her bare breasts. Classmates spread rumors that she's pregnant with his child (she's not). A man masturbates to images of clothed women on television; nothing sensitive shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent use (in English subtitles) of "f--k," "s--t," "motherf----r," "a--hole," "son of a bitch," "bastard," "piss," "d--ks--t," "hell," "whore." Exclamatory use of "oh God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A character is very drunk in one scene. Character sprayed with Valium gas every night. Brief smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Diverse Representations

All cast members are South Korean. Male leads are complex characters, but women are depicted as sex objects who need to be saved by men. They're also used as excuses for the male leads to hurt others.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

Invading the privacy of others may backfire on you. But the film has more negative messages than positive ones, with revenge a central theme no matter the collateral damage.

Positive Role Models

Dae-su stops drinking and trains hard as he learns to fight, but it's for the negative purpose of seeking revenge. Woo-jin manipulates others and refuses to take responsibility for the death of a loved one, blaming it on Dae-su. Both leads lose their integrity and humanity in the process of trying to destroy each other.

Parents need to know that Oldboy is renowned director Park Chan-wook's second addition to his "Vengeance Trilogy," released after 2002's Sympathy for Mr Vengeance . It has extremely mature sexual themes related to incest, a sustained graphic sex scene, and nudity (breasts and bottoms). Several vicious fight scenes involve martial arts, blunt objects (a hammer), and lots of blood. Characters die. There's shooting, arguing, struggling, sexual violence, and characters who are kidnapped and trapped. Language includes "f--k," "s--t," and more. A character appears very drunk in one scene, Valium gas is used to put someone to sleep, and smoking is shown. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (10)
Kids say (11)

Based on 10 parent reviews

What's the Story?

In OLDBOY, businessman Oh Dae-su ( Choi Min-sik ) is drunk one night and is arrested. While a friend picks him up from the police station, he's suddenly and mysteriously abducted. He finds himself in a room where he's served meals, given a television, and gassed every night at bedtime. He is locked up there for 15 long years, without explanation. After a time, he begins punching the walls, practice fighting, to take out his anger. He also makes an escape attempt, and is nearly out, but finds himself suddenly released. He goes looking for something to eat and meets chef Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung); she takes pity on him and brings him to her home. He becomes obsessed with figuring out why he was imprisoned and who did it. Little does he know the danger he will face, as well as the horrible truths he will discover.

Is It Any Good?

Park Chan-wook 's vicious story of vengeance is shocking but explores the complexity of human nature on a thrillingly primal level. The first images of Dae-su in Oldboy -- seen in Korean with English subtitles for this review -- are of an obnoxious drunk, but it's not long before his confinement makes us sympathetic; no one deserves this kind of torture. Yet his mind is free, and it's intriguing to see his attempts to pass the time, to hold onto something. All the while, the mystery of his imprisonment makes these moments doubly intriguing. Even after the character's release, Park continues to sustain the movie's intensity to the final shot, playing off of the character's transformation.

Now taut, darkened, and haunted, he's as unsure of himself around his love interest Mi-do as he is capable of violence. An unforgettable scene has him eating a live squid just to feel the sensation of it. But in arguably the movie's most famous shot, Park simply tracks left and right for several minutes as Dae-su fights dozens of men in real time. But within the adrenaline rush of his revenge journey, Mi-do (and other female characters) pay the price for male ego. Park fails to give them any agency, leaving a sour taste in an otherwise intriguing and brutal mystery.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Oldboy 's violence . How intense is it, and what effect does it have? Is it thrilling? Gruesome? How much is directed toward women?

How does sex come into the plot? Is sex used in a negative way? What kind of values does the movie impart?

Why are revenge stories so appealing or satisfying? In real life, what does revenge accomplish?

Is Dae-su a sympathetic character? Does he start that way? At what point do we begin to identify with him?

Movie Details

In theaters : July 30, 2003
On DVD or streaming : March 25, 2005
Cast : Choi Min-sik , Kang Hye-jung , Yoo Ji-tae
Director : Park Chan-wook
Inclusion Information : Asian directors, Asian writers
Studio : Tartan Video
Genre : Thriller
Run time : 120 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : strong violence including scenes of torture, sexuality and pervasive language
Last updated : June 20, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Oldboy (2003)

The 2003 film Oldboy (Oldeuboi) , a Korean production directed by Park Chan-wook, is one of those disturbing explorations of humanity that leaves you with something akin to a post-Lynchian (good Lynch) hangover that lingers for several months after viewing (for context I saw the movie in September of 2018 and I am still processing it). At first I was completely shocked and disturbed — a little empty/drained in the immediate aftermath of something so sinister. But it kept gnawing at me — as exceptional, not merely shocking, art is prone to do. The movie begs for further analysis, thought, and confrontation; and confrontation is at the core of Oldboy .

Your gravest mistake wasn’t failing to find the answer. You can’t find the right answer if you ask the wrong questions. – Lee Woojin (Oldeuboi)

Before proceeding too much further I have a few disclaimers: 1) As alluded to above, this movie conjured similar feelings to a Lynch film and for a lot of the same reasons — the sex and violence are disturbing components of the movie. I am typically not the squeamish sort and found myself shutting my eyes at a particular point; believe me, that does not typically happen. With that in mind, combined with the dark territory the movie enters, you may want to pass. 2) This review/essay will be filled with spoilers, so if the above disclosure does not apply and you plan on seeing the movie you may want to stop now and come back after viewing. 3) I do not touch the Spike Lee Americanization of Oldboy . Nothing in here is reflective of what that cast and crew put together.

An Ode to Grecian Tragedy (At Least of the Freudian Variety)

After the initial shock of the film (which is less about the final reveal, and more about the final choice) the lightbulb moment that put it in perspective was putting it in the context of the Oedipus myth, and a highly Freudian approach to it — read: major incestuous psychosexual ickiness. Not only is a slightly altered version of this ancient tale employed through a contemporary context, but we are brought into the action and are implicated in the moral crime itself.

Major spoilers coming up : Oldboy follows the revenge movie structure almost perfectly. It truly lulls you to sleep for the final twist. Even the final twist is, initially, a question of whether or not Oh Dae-Su (the protagonist) will get his revenge, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

While locked up his wife dies, and his daughter ends up adopted — this is all disseminated to him via a television in his room. Upon his release he meets a woman, Mi-Do, and eventually they end up falling in love with one another. The psychology of this, he the protector and she the healer, could be a whole essay in and of its own accord. Their falling in love is both fascinating, bizarre and strangely believable. On Oh Dae-Su’s path towards revenge he violently mows down hired goons and eventually makes his way to the source of this plot against him, his former schoolmate Lee Woojin. Again, the initial twist looks as though Lee Woojin has captured Mi-Do through deceit and her life is in his hands, and Oh Dae-Su is not strong enough to defeat Lee’s bodyguard. There was no Chekhovian gun in an earlier scene that indicates any way out, and the movie seems like it’s going to end in the most pessimistic way possible… until it gets worse.

Lee, it turns out, was the younger brother of a girl Oh Dae-Su flirted with in school. Later Oh Dae-Su caught Lee and his sister in the act of incest. Lee elaborates that rumors spread, his sister became pregnant and she killed herself from the shame. Lee was completely in love with his sister and blamed Oh Dae-Su for her death, now the movie looks like a strange revenge tale of incestuous lovers, and this is where Lee explains that he did not just want to punish Oh Dae-Su, but wanted him to truly experience what it was like to have feelings for someone that you were not supposed to. Lee had killed Oh Dae-Su’s wife, and through a surrogate, adopted his daughter, raising her and conditioning her through hypnotism and strange behavior modifying practices. During this time Lee was doing the same things to Oh Dae-Su, conditioning him, drugging and hypnotizing him. Meeting and falling in love with Mi-Do was not an accident, but was Lee’s ultimate revenge because Mi-Do is Oh Dae-Su’s daughter.

Post-Truth Actualized

Park Chan-wook’s direction is masterful in this. He understands the expectation of the audience and creates such a furious and reactive pace that you do not have time to piece the mystery together. He manipulates us, both to not see the twist coming and to be complicit in the moral failure of Oh Dae-Su. This is what makes the movie so disturbing and yet powerful as an internal lens. It is a simple thing to dismiss and deny our capacity for evil, to think of ourselves as “good” people when we are not faced with such an extreme moral conflict. Chan-wook actually makes us root for the love between Oh Dae-Su and Mi-Do, he creates a scene charged with the erotic as the two become lovers and invites the unwitting viewer to be complicit in this act. When the reveal is finally made we are not just shocked, we are attempting to make sense of our own guilt.

Chan-wook could end the story there and the film would be powerful and challenging, but he takes us another step further. The film ends with a choice. Oh Dae-Su’s daughter remains ignorant of their true relation, and is still in love. He must determine what to do with this mess. The full force of the film is in its forcing the viewer to deal with the nature of truth, solipsism *, moral subjectivity and how we choose to establish moral boundaries (either as transcendent or situational). Oh Dae-Su’s final choice is what makes the movie an unflinching look at human nature. We are not given the ambiguity of “what-ifs” that could have been left us (in a way that lets us off the hook), but we see his final choice and have to ask ourselves what we would have done. Oh Dae-Su tracks down the hypnotist who had programmed Mi-Do and himself to fall in love, and has her wipe his mind of the truth, so that they can continue on in ignorance, not having to contend with the horrible reality of things.

In an age of personal truth, or post-truth, Chan-wook is challenging us to see the denial of transcendent ideals for what it is. We are constantly hypnotizing ourselves to realities in order to justify, validate, or, at its worst, disintegrate morality altogether.

Theory Lived Out

Oldboy moves theoretical logic into the real world, stemming from a denial of anything foundational i.e. there is no capital “T”-truth, only lived-out and experiential personal truth. In the progressivist school these personal truths lead towards moral grounding. As we progress societally our self-knowledge improves, our knowledge of others improves, and our morality is shaped into something greater and more fluid than the “rigidity” of morals grounded in the transcendent. There are legitimate attempts to marry traditional and progressive views with movement towards the transcendental. What Chan-wook is calling us to wrestle with, however, is the centrality of humanity that typifies progressive theory i.e. human progress leads to transcendence vs. human progress as the pursuit of the transcendent. It seems, at first glance, to be a subtle difference, but this is the choice that Oh Dae-Su makes.

What it reveals is that moving forward is not always progressive, but can actually become regressive. Or as C.S Lewis puts it: “Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

I do not want to make a case against progress, or the progressive theories in general. What I think Oldboy proposes is a need for being careful with what we progress towards. And what we progress towards is dependent on who/what takes the central role of importance.

Closed Loop Sexuality & Solipsism

When we enter into these sorts of self-produced truth structures we enter into a sort of solipsistic framework. Solipsism is a logical conundrum that covers the idea that “only I can know that I exist.” It spills out of Cartesian “I think, therefore I am” ideologies, and really took off as existentialism began to develop. The application of solipsism in this case is from the standpoint of moral and/or truth construction. This, in and of itself, is a lengthy topic that dives into the realm of post-truth and “my own truth” at length. These are messy arguments to enter into, and cases such as Oldboy challenge this narrative of self-constructed values, while not necessarily giving a clear answer for an alternative. We all feel icky about the whole situation, but, at the end of the day, why?

As Christians we can begin to answer this in the context of what we build our ideas of truth off of — a transcendent (and imminent) God who is, by his very nature, truth itself. What this means is that, as Christians, we believe in capital “T” truth and know exactly why this brokenness pulls us away from what is good. This all plays out in a rather fascinating sexual/love metaphor in Oldboy .

Incest is nothing new to the ancient tragic stories. Where this changes in Oldboy is that Lee, the story’s antagonist, decontextualizes his sister from moral norms and recontextualizes her as someone whom he deeply loves. Sister becomes just another word, and he validates their relationship as transcendent of these sorts of fetters in and of itself. This is the ultimate danger of solipsism — that important and legitimate norms are simply brushed aside as mere abstractions that do not apply if you place a different abstraction as higher (you could read idol for abstraction if you wish, they are simply no longer carved but have become verbal & written symbols of that which we mistakenly replace THE transcendent one with).

Lee’s (and eventually Oh Dae-Su’s) choice is to misunderstand a holistic view of love, by placing two singular aspects together and ignoring the rest (those being the love of family and the connection between love and sex). Even this view of sex is extremely limited (as is Oh Dae-Su and Mi-Do’s) to passion and pleasure. There are much more devoted thinkers than myself who have elaborated on what a holistic sexual relationship is, and I would recommend seeking them out for a clearer picture. The whole point of this is merely to point out the destructiveness of distilling something into its components, choosing a few of those components to embrace, and pretending that the remainder of the whole will be unaffected/ing. In the case of incest we literally see a procreative act turn into something destructive — at the genetic level and looking at the broader sense of marriage as a form of community building and expanding. This is the very same danger of equating and substituting truths for Truth.

“No tree can grow to Heaven unless its roots reach down to Hell.” – Carl Jung

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Brian graduated from Wisconsin Lutheran College with a degree in English-Literature. He is a closet novelist and story writer, a husband, and father to three.

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Let’s Hear It For the Alien Franchise’s Synthetic Bois and Girls!

I’m sorry but the kid at the start of 'a quiet place' deserved it, this overlooked stephen king adaptation just hit paramount+ at exactly the right time.

As humans, we are prone to a plethora of emotions throughout our lives. It is both one of our best strengths and greatest weaknesses, as while rampant emotions can lead us to doing things that we may later regret, without them, we lose a huge chunk of what makes us human in the first place. Sometimes these emotions can mix in a volatile way that can cause us to seek revenge over one another. This concept alone isn't one that is unfamiliar to many, as I am sure we have all had our moments of small, petty revenge for things that would be seen upon looking back as not necessarily being worth getting revenge for in the first place. However, for the protagonist and antagonist of 2003's Oldboy , revenge could not be more serious of a topic for them. It is the single most important goal that fuels all of their actions, and it is the centerpiece upon which the entire film is built around. In fact, the film itself is part of a trilogy of films titled The Vengeance Trilogy that all center around the theme of revenge. It was the second film, coming after Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and before Lady Vengeance . It should be noted that these films are linked thematically and not narratively. Oldboy was also remade in 2013 by director Spike Lee , though it was seen as a mediocre reinterpretation that failed to add anything substantial to the narrative. The 2003 film however did such a good job at presenting the theme of revenge that it has won a plethora of awards over its lifetime, such as the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival or how it won the Best Film at both the Grand Bell Awards and the Korean Film Awards.

RELATED: If You Liked 'Parasite', Check Out These 20 Other Great South Korean Films

To give some context surrounding the climactic ending of the film, Oldboy is a South Korean film directed by Park Chan-Wook that focuses on the journey of a man named Oh Dae-su ( Choi Min-sik ) after being locked away in a mysterious prison for fifteen years. After so long with no real human interaction, Oh Dae-su wants to find out whom he wronged to deserve the punishment he just endured, and he wants to make them pay for the torture they just placed unto him. Thus, the cycle of revenge moves into full effect. The protagonist wronged someone, they got revenge on him, and now he wants revenge on them. It is a cycle that will continue to spiral as each person tries to come out on top. Unfortunately for Oh Dae-su, the revenge for his actions is far from over like he thinks.

Throughout the duration of the film we find out that the person targeting Oh Dae-su is a man by the name of Lee Woo-jin ( Yoo Ji-tae ) who is getting revenge on him for causing the death of his sister. When they were both still kids in high school, Oh Dae-su caught Lee Woo-jin committing an act of incest with his sister Lee Soo-ah. Oh Dae-su told his friend No Joo-hwan ( Ji Dae-han ) who then spread the rumors across the school. These rumors combined with the "phantom pregnancy" that Lee Woo-jin says his sister developed lead to her eventual suicide. It is intentionally left vague if the phantom pregnancy was what happened or if that is just what Lee Woo-jin said to hide himself from his past actions and the possibility of actually causing his sister to become pregnant.

The real act of revenge wasn't just to lock Oh Dae-su away for fifteen years, but it was actually to make him feel the same levels of pain as Lee Woo-jin had gone through. As a result, the real revenge plot was to subliminally get Oh Dae-su to fall in love with his own daughter, who was only four when he disappeared. To get this to happen, Lee Woo-jin had Oh Dae-su's wife murdered and his daughter Mi-do ( Kang Hye-jung ) hypnotized to ensure that the two would fall for one another once Oh Dae-su was released. In the climactic scene at Lee Woo-jin's penthouse, he is threatening to tell Mi-do the truth about how she really had sex with her own father just after Oh Dae-su had learned it for himself. Obviously not wanting to permanently scar his daughter, Oh Dae-su begs for Lee Woo-jin not to tell her, going so far as to cut his own tongue out as a gesture of what he would do to make sure she never learned the truth. Seeing the lengths he would go to, Lee Woo-jin decides to not have Mi-do learn the truth, instead leaving Oh Dae-su with a remote that supposedly would cause the pacemaker that Lee Woo-jin had installed to kill himself if Oh Dae-su tried to torture him. Of course, Oh Dae-su reaches for the remote, but upon pressing it he finds out that the remote actually turns on a loudspeaker that plays audio of him and Mi-do having sex. Crushed, humiliated, and in unimaginable pain, Oh Dae-su lies on the floor of the penthouse broken as Lee Woo-jin descends the elevator. Having fulfilled his revenge plot that was so long in the making, Lee Woo-jin takes his own life feeling that he is now finally satisfied.

Unsure of what to do, Oh Dae-su finds the hypnotist that tranced him earlier in the film and convinces her to make him forget the secret, so that he can go on without living in disgust with himself. Again, the movie makes it unclear if Oh Dae-su actually found the hypnotist or if it is just a way to project his own attempts to block the memory, as the next scene shows her nowhere to be found and instead, he is laying in the snow where Mi-do finds him and confesses his love for him. The two embrace, and there's a conflicted expression on Oh Dae-su's face that makes one wonder if he will ever truly forget what the truth is.

Oldboy is a movie that doesn't hold back with its depictions of the taboo events that can unfold in our lives and the ever-growing thirst to get revenge on those who have wronged us. While the ending is portrayed as being potentially happy, it is far overshadowed by the truth that the most positive ending for these two is to never know that they are actually related. It is a happy ending only if you have the willpower to ignore the truth of the situation and allow Oh Dae-su and Mi-do to live in a lie that has been meticulously crafted for them. This raises the long asked philosophical question: is it better to live in a happy lie or to live in a sad reality? It's a question that, while seemingly easy to answer on the surface, provides some strong conflicting emotions when presented more directly into our lives. It is almost always better to face the truth, but that is easier said than done when the truth brings you so much pain. For Oh Dae-su, a man that was just utterly demolished mentally, physically and emotionally, he did not have the strength to endure his life with the knowledge of the truth.

The ending of Oldboy gives a false sense of happiness and closure to viewers. It triggers what should normally be a happy ending where the protagonist gets with their love interest, which in turn makes viewers all the more unsettled when it sinks in that they are being emotionally manipulated to be happy for this incestuous relationship. The protagonist does not win in this film, he only does what he thinks is necessary to dampen the pain of his loss, and through that we are left to digest the impact that revenge has had on his life. The film does not necessarily give a direct message to be learned, except perhaps to be wary of how revenge can completely ruin another person's life as well as your own. Perhaps it is an attempt to make us show more empathy towards those around us, and to not be so rash as to act out on those emotions that would demand for us to seek revenge. After all, neither of the characters attempting to get revenge in the film have good endings. Lee Woo-jin shoots himself after convincing himself that revenge was all he wanted out of life, thus preventing him from ever moving on and forever locking his life to the past, and Oh Dae-su tries to make himself stay with his daughter in an attempt to make himself ignorant of the painful truth. The entire point of revenge is that it is supposed to bring a level of satisfaction towards those who achieve it, however Oldboy makes it clear that the satisfaction brought out from revenge is not a feeling worth chasing.

Movie Features
Oldboy (2003)

The Definitives

Critical essays, histories, and appreciations of great films

Essay by Brian Eggert August 10, 2023

(Note: Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Park Chan-Wook’s cinematic masterpiece, Oldboy will be released in theaters, restored and remastered in stunning 4K, on August 16. This essay is a newly edited and expanded version of one published on March 23, 2009. )

Oh Dae-su has a craving after 15 years in prison. “I want to eat something alive,” he declares. He visits a restaurant, and the chef delivers a live octopus. Oh bites off the creature’s head without hesitation, chomping mouthfuls as he gathers its winding limbs. They cling to him, grasping for life with pointless, automatic effort. This is not a special effect. Four takes and as many octopuses later, and the shot was perfect, the creature’s tentacles suctioning the actor’s face with just the right desperation as he chews. Cook it, slice it up, and serve it with a garnish of pickled ginger, and it’s called sushi. Consume it unprepared, and the act has meaning. Oldboy , by South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, uses gut-wrenching and visceral imagery to create symbols, assigning ultra-violence, sexual perversity, and torture metaphoric reasoning that ripens the twisting narrative into a stark emotional confrontation. Based on the Japanese manga Old Boy by writer Tsuchiya Garon and illustrator Minegishi Nobuaki, Park’s script uses the source as a springboard. Giving significance to each scene, like The Bard to his stanzas, Park is not a wasteful filmmaker. He explores action, dark humor, and complex motivations, and much of what happens in the film is not fully understood until the last scenes. And by that point, anyone who has watched Oldboy has a feverish desire to watch it again.

That urge to rewatch Oldboy a second time helped turn the 2003 film into a commercial and critical success. It quickly became one of the first major South Korean cinematic exports to connect with an international audience, launching the country’s Film Renaissance. The South Korean film industry has undergone many shifts since the Korean War (1950-1953), including the strict control of film-making licenses imposed on the industry under Park Chung-hee’s presidency to a relaxing of quota restrictions during the country’s economic boom in the 1980s. The most significant shift came with South Korea’s modernization of its film industry to meet the global demands for better production values, spearheaded under the government’s control. But it was the so-called 386 Generation who became agents of change. Named after the speed of an Intel computer chip, the term refers to people who were born in the 1960s, attended college in the 1980s, and started making films in the computer age of the 1990s. Members of the 386 Generation relied on creativity rather than resources, paving new roads for domestic blockbusters, such as Kang Je-gyu’s box-office hit Shiri (1999), and laying the groundwork for the Korean Cinema Renaissance of the 2000s.

Oldboy’s first scene bursts onto the screen with Cho Young-wuk’s propulsive score and the image of Oh, who stops a man from committing suicide by hanging onto his necktie. Oh proceeds to tell the man the story of his 15-year imprisonment. This is the first of three times Oh will share his story in the film, and with each recitation, the story’s meaning changes—from one of outrage to one of tragedy, and finally to abject desperation. Oh’s first account begins in the late 1980s. He has been arrested and behaves like a drunken windbag in a police station, trying to urinate on the floor, pick fights, and take off his clothes. Finally bailed out by a friend, Oh calls home, promising his daughter that he will return soon. But then he disappears. When the film finds him again, Oh has spent two months locked in what appears to be a shabby hotel room—complete with a shower, bed, and television. The space is fortified with a metal door and brick walls. He cannot leave. His captors, whoever they are, supply daily meals of fried dumplings through a slot in the door. Periodically, an electronic jingle announces the release of sleeping gas, and when Oh regains consciousness, his room has been cleaned and his hair groomed. Television passes the time—shown in a montage of Oh trying to escape, crossed with newscasts charting more than a decade of South Korea’s recent history—and becomes his everything: church, clock, calendar, friend, and lover. Alone and unsure why he has been taken, Oh begins to crack. He sees himself swarmed by ants and even attempts suicide to free himself, only to be gassed again and saved.

The cycle continues for years without Oh ever knowing who has done this to him or why. The television breaks the news of his wife dying in an accident. He vows revenge, declaring that he will rip apart the body of his tormentor and “chew it all down.” Oh prepares himself by watching kung fu and punching the brick walls to pass the time, developing callus-enforced knuckles with his “imaginary training.” He is plagued by bizarre dreams and hallucinations, and he may be under the spell of hypnosis. Regardless, he journals long lists of potential enemies, and by the stack of notebooks, Oh has not led a distinguished life. “Even though I’m no more than a monster,” he rationalizes, “don’t I, too, have the right to live?” And while he plans an elaborate escape over many patient years, he suddenly finds himself set free by his captors. Emerging from a trunk placed on a patch of grass on a rooftop, Oh is unleashed on the world in a hardened and empty form, his only purpose: revenge. Hungry for life, or perhaps to practice his plan to “chew it all down,” Oh meets sushi chef Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), whom he saw on television. She serves him the live octopus as a delicacy, but not before he receives a call from his former captor. “Do you know who has done this to you?” the voice asks. Oh guesses a few names from his notebooks, all wrong. The voice discloses, “I’m a sort of scholar. And my major is you.” Just as Oh will seek revenge on whoever imprisoned him, his tormentor has already begun enacting his revenge. Indeed, the “how” of Oh escaping remains less important than the question of “why” someone would want such horrific revenge.

On the surface, Oldboy’s status as a breakout film stems from its graphic violence, incestuous themes, morbid laughs, and narrative twists—shock elements that spread word-of-mouth and made the film a must-see success. The initial revenge hook is merely a pretense, delivered in the second act as Oh proceeds to hunt down his former captors. However sensational Oh’s initial reprisals may be, Park has more in mind than a straightforward revenge thriller. What may seem indulgent and grotesque in the first half is later justified as dramatic irony, making additional viewings crucial to process the remarkable intensity of the narrative beyond its initial shock. Shrouded by cryptic allusions and uncertain causalities, Park’s cinematic atmosphere contains a dreamlike quality best described as Kafkaesque. The director even cites Franz Kafka as an influence; though, unlike Kafka, he resists allegory. Oh is persecuted by an unseen oppressor for unknown reasons, just like Kafka’s protagonist in The Trial (1925). Even after Oh is released, he receives taunting, paranoid messages: “How’s life in a bigger prison?” At every turn, Oh and Mi-do, who has joined his quest, realize they are being watched, fuelling the claustrophobic sense that Oh has been released to set upon a path that’s been chosen for him.

Furthermore, Park’s insect imagery draws from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915), another story where isolation leads to change, reflection, and questions about what is real. Is Oh ever truly freed from his prison? How much is Oh acting according to his will, and how much is his tormentor controlling him? After his cephalopod meal, Oh finds himself in Mi-do’s home, waking from a blackout. Both feel like they’ve met each other before. After reading his journals, she remarks on his dreams about ants, wherein they devour him from the inside out. Lonely people see ants, she explains. They signify the dreamer’s desire to become part of a hive or collective. Mi-do dreams about ants too, or rather a human-sized ant creature on the subway, sitting by itself, isolated. If her dream-ant has no one, what chance does she have? And so, Mi-do, seemingly alone in the world, remains by Oh’s side, eventually as an adoring lover who needs him. Meanwhile, Oh tests his theoretical training by confronting five men loitering near a street. He makes short work of them. Then, along with Mi-do, he attempts to locate the underworld prison where he was held by scouting Chinese restaurants with the name Blue Dragon, looking for the same dumplings he had eaten for 15 years.

Oh’s temporary status as a heroic revenger allows Oldboy to, unfortunately, be misinterpreted as exploitation, even pigeonholed into a category of films that use violence as a primal indulgence of the senses. On the surface, Park’s variety of filmic bloodshed is represented with staggering savagery; he pushes the limits of censorship by suggesting teeth ripped from the mouth with a hammer, scissors stabbing into an ear, and later cutting a tongue from a mouth. Of course, these acts are chosen for their force, their ability to confront the viewer by their concept alone. Park avoids glorifying the act and implies violence by cleverly cutting around the actions themselves—similar to how viewers often remember seeing the savagery in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), though director Tobe Hooper carefully avoided shots of direct impact between tools and flesh. Park shows the tail of Oh’s hammer clasping onto the hotel warden’s incisor like a nail; blood begins to ooze from the victim’s gums, and then Park cuts away to show a collection of removed teeth. If the director were interested in mere exploitation, his camera would have focused on the deed in all its horrible reality. But the gory details are unimportant; thus, they are not shown. The action registers enough significance when communicated through clever if unrevealing edits. Violence takes the blame because the film’s revenge scenes rest on dramatic turns more graphic than the portrayed bloodshed, and the power of those turns makes everything else seem more explicit.

The energy, sensationalism, and even comic idiosyncrasy of Park’s direction, particularly in Oldboy above his other pictures, might distract from the events depicted, except they are just as unexpected. Constructing a thriller that avoids a predictable outcome, where the hero aims to get the bad guy and, in the end, does, Park uses color saturations, intentional grain, and wild formal manipulation to match the volatile and emotionally flayed nature of the story. Had the production any less oomph, the mise-en-scène would be desperate to catch up with the rapidly unraveling narrative. Finding equilibrium between form and function, Park instills purely emotional responses in his viewers. As violent as his picture seems, Park does not intend to exhaust the viewer’s body in their appalled reactions to the film’s extremes. He drains us emotionally, exposing us to a painful dramatic beating that stabs and twists the knife in the final scene. Park’s aesthetic may employ expressive embellishments, but the approach never feels superfluous; rather, his choices are compelled by his characters’ psychology—motivated, slightly deranged, and certainly unreliable given the themes of post-hypnotic suggestion in the film. Elsewhere, Oldboy finds Park experimenting, and some of the production values have not aged well since 2003. Note the blocky CGI used to portray Oh’s forearm, where an ant surfaces and crawls about. The floating countdown clock used in visual transitions also shows signs of Park’s limited resources.

Not interested in turning Oldboy into a reflector of Korean history or culture, Park presents his film as personal expression and stylistic experimentation, making way for his more sophisticated, restrained, but no less emotionally searing films in the years to follow. Park has regularly told the press that he only decided to become a filmmaker after seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Following the Hitchcockian model, the director finds a unique balance between art and entertainment in Oldboy , embracing each concern equally. He weaves a story wrought with dramatic fire, which, like Vertigo , mutates into something more perverse, drawing from trauma and repressed memories, and yet more strangely evocative as the story advances. Both pictures feature a protagonist whose presence is sympathetic yet disturbed, stripped of layer after layer until laid bare. Whereas Hitchcock’s film relies on emotional torment in his character’s psyche, Park’s film boasts savage physical brutality to signify an appalling psychological affliction, embracing the undeniable connection between mind and body. Both films refuse to allow a straightforward viewing; they deal in fractured minds and obsessive pursuits, and they ask us to reflect on and ultimately participate in an entrenched subjectivity, self-destruction, revenge, and sacrifice.

Following a carefully laid trail of breadcrumbs in the form of mysterious boxes and puzzling phone calls, Oh Dae-su discovers his former high school classmate Lee Woo-jin (Yu Ji-tae) is responsible for imprisoning him. Oh’s crime dates back to their teens at Songnok High School, class of 1979, where the alums are called Old Boys. After spying on Lee sexually experimenting with his own sister as teens, Oh told a fellow student what he saw, and the rumor mill became so unbearable that Lee’s sister committed suicide—with Lee clinging to her on the edge of a dam, a shot analogous to Oh saving the suicidal man in the first scene. As much as Oh burns for payback, Lee has smoldered for much longer, plotting his victim’s every move since adolescence and drawing from his considerable financial resources to stage an elaborate revenge. Lee arranged for Oh to meet Mi-do through a post-hypnotic suggestion, and he orchestrated their love affair as incestuous payback. Among the most chilling scenes is when, after Oh and Mi-do make love for the first time, Lee gasses them and joins them on the bed to appreciate his handiwork, caressing Mi-do’s bare hip like the third member of a demented ménage-a-trois . But rather than Oh finally getting his due, he is out-revenged by Lee, who reveals to Oh that Mi-do is actually his now-grown daughter, whom Oh believed to be in another country with a new family.

When the credits roll, how we should feel about Oh Dae-su’s decision is uncertain. Park’s film continues to leave viewers confused and traumatized into a shocked, emptied numbness, as though Park has cored us until we can supply answers. Does Oh Dae-su’s crooked smile in the last shot suggest that a part of him is not affected by the hypnosis? Is his expression another twisted reflection of the painting on his prison room wall? “Laugh, and the world laughs with you,” the image reads. “Weep, and you weep alone.” If the expression is a smile, then he is blissfully unaware that his love for Mi-do is wrong, which has depraved consequences. If the hypnosis didn’t work, his desire to protect his daughter from the truth has even more disturbing implications if they remain together. In either case, the answer comes with an ugly spin, leaving the viewer uncomfortable and shaken no matter the outcome. But the lasting influence of the film remains its emotional impact. Oldboy broods on the self-destructive vanity of revenge, presenting the most terrible case in the Vengeance Trilogy. Park challenges typical uses of explicit violence by deploying it symbolically in support of his unforgiving, undeniably involving narratives. This visceral storytelling, told with rich visuals, impassioned style, and poetic purpose, makes Oldboy an enduring and unforgettable experience.

Bibliography:

Chee, Alexander. “Park Chan-wook, the Man Who Put Korean Cinema on the Map.” NYTimes.com , 16 October 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/t-magazine/park-chan-wook.html . Accessed 29 July 2023.

Choi, Jinhee. The South Korean Film Renaissance . Wesleyan University Press, 2010.

Darcy, Paquet. New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves. Wallflower Press, 2010.

Gateward, Frances. Seoul Searching . SUNY Press, 2007.

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6 Reasons Why “Oldboy” is a Modern Masterpiece of South Korean Cinema

This second installment of Park Chan-wook’s “Vengeance Trilogy” is the film that turned global interest toward Korean cinema, one that’s a true masterpiece of South Korean cinema, and one that is still discussed for its unique aesthetics and elaborate technique.

“Oldboy” screened at festivals all over the world winning tens of awards, with the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival being among them.   Here are six reasons that justify its status. Please note that the article contains many spoilers.

1. Direction that combines art-house, mainstream, and cult

Park’s films have a unique and magnificent visual style. However, as he has stated, the technical part comes second in his movies, with the first role being reserved for the characters and the story. His process starts with the writing, and the search for the audiovisuals comes after the script has been concluded. Park insists that he is, first and foremost, a storyteller, and that every element of his films must support the story in the best way.

In that fashion, the script of the film, which is based on the homonymous manga, focuses on Dae-su, a businessman who is arrested for drunkenness, missing his daughter’s fourth birthday. That same night, and for no apparent reason, he is abducted and forced to live in the same room for 15 years.

When he is unexpectedly released, he is set on exacting revenge, although the sole evidence in his possession is the fact that he must accomplish this revenge in five days. A girl he meets at a sushi restaurant, where she works as a chef, decides to help him, once more with no apparent reason.

This combination is elaborately portrayed by two succeeding sequences – the one that Dae-su spends trapped in a room, and the moment of his escape. The first one has distinct, art-house aesthetics, as the pace is quite slow and the whole sequence takes place inside four walls, almost without any action, with Park focusing on showing the consequences the imprisonment causes to Dae-su.

On the contrary, the scene where he escapes, despite its technical perfection, definitely moves towards the mainstream, as it looks like an action scene out of a Hollywood film, particularly due to the fact that a single man wins against tens of opponents. The abrupt cut at the end of the scene also moves toward this direction.

The cult element is also evident in the film, in a number of scenes. The one where Dae-su is devouring a live octopus (which is an actual scene, not computer generated), the whole concept of Mr. Han, and both of the aforementioned sequences combine exploitation elements, in distinctly cult fashion.

2. The presentation of the theme of revenge

Although “Oldboy” has revenge as its central theme, Park directs a movie with the actual goal of presenting another dimension, one that leads to repentance. The humiliation and ensuing catharsis are the primary concepts, and revenge, which creates chain reactions of growing hatred, is solely an element of the set, with the focus being on vengeance not as an act, but the reasons that lead to it and its consequences.

The aspect regarding the consequences is the most obvious. Dae-su ends up utterly destroyed on all levels, because he wanted to exact revenge from the man who imprisoned him, with the fact that he was tricked into having sex with his daughter being likely the worst. This element brings the film closer to an ancient Greek tragedy, through a distinctly Oedipal concept.

The case of Lee Woo-jin, on the other hand, shows the futility of revenge as an action for a man that could do so much with what he had, but instead decided to devote all of his powers to exacting revenge from a man who was, nonetheless, already destroyed.

3. A very entertaining combination of shock and extreme, ironic humor

“Oldboy” includes a number of truly shocking scenes and concepts. From the abduction of Dae-su, to his imprisonment for 15 years, to the actual reason behind it, and everything between, are rather shocking. The scene of him eating the octopus, the various bloody fights, the sex scene with his daughter, and the entirety of the ending sequence, definitely provide a shock element, which the spectator does not easily overcome.

However, Park managed to inject his distinct, dark, and ironic sense of humor, in this otherwise onerous setting. During the corridor scene, when Dae-su asks the thugs for their blood type before he hands them a member of their team he had previously hurt. The whole concept of the character, with Dae-su acting like a caricature throughout the majority of the film. His interactions with his kidnapper, in a sequence mocking everything presented on screen concerning this kind of relationship.

This very dark sense of irony finds its apogee in the very end, with Dae-su asking the hypnotist to make him forget that Mido is actually his daughter, in order to return to a relationship he knows is incestuous.

4. Choi Min-sik gives an acting recital

Park demanded a lot from his protagonist, including actually eating live octopus, but Choi Min-sik definitely rose to the challenge, sublimely portraying a truly difficult character. His ability to be equally convincing as he portrays a number of statuses and behaviors found its apogee in “Oldboy”.

In that fashion, he starts as a drunken loser, to a man frustrated and perplexed by his fate, to a non-stop vigilante, to a lover, and to a man beaten and shattered by the disclosure of his actual relationship with his daughter. Furthermore, Choi manages to retain a caricature style throughout all these transformations, which perfectly suits the combination of shock and extreme humor Park wanted.

Yoo Ji-Tae as Lee Woo-jin is also great as the impersonation of evil, a man so driven to destroy Dae-su that he cares about nothing else. Probably his greatest moment is during the ending sequence, when his true intentions and reasons are revealed, as he appears as a man so sad but so pathetic at the same time.

Kim Byung-ok provides a cult element in the film as Mr. Han, while Oh Dal-su as the kidnapper manages to provide, once more, a comical aspect, even in this setting.

5. The Corridor Scene

In one of the most elaborate action scenes ever to appear in cinema, Oh Dae-su confronts a number of armed henchmen set to prevent him from escaping, having a hammer as his sole weapon.

The scene begins with Park’s absurd sense of humor, since Dae-su asks the thugs for their blood type before he hands them a member of their team he had previously hurt. He then proceeds to attack them.

The scene could be characterized as a bit hyperbolic, since in the end, he manages to win against so many enemies, but this act is not presented in a superhero fashion. Dae-su gets hurt quite a bit, he falls over a bunch of times, he is stabbed in the back with a knife that stays in for the rest of the fight, and he uses every dirty trick in the book to win, including playing dead.

The final frame of the scene is also great with Dae-su smiling, despite the fact that a new bunch of enemies emerge from the elevator.

The scene was executed to perfection, but it took 17 takes over three days to achieve the result Park wanted, and is actually one continuous take. There was no editing whatsoever, except for the knife in Dae-su’s back that was computer generated.

As the scene progresses sideways with the camera following, the geometry of it is astonishing and quite reminiscent of old school beat-em-up games, like “Final Fight” and “Double Dragon”, with a sense that is heightened by the fact that the protagonist fights alone against scores of enemies. Park, however, has stated that the effect was unintentional.

6. Cinematography and editing that match the grotesque and comical nature of Park’s direction

Chung Chung-hoon’s cinematography does wonders in the presentation of the complexity of the story and the intense aesthetics Park wanted to give the movie. Apart from the corridor scene, Chung uses bright colors, intentional grain, and color saturations, in an effort to match the extreme nature of the story without physically exhausting the audience.

Park Chan-wook is one of the most prominent filmmakers in the industry in his use of the handheld camera, as he uses it to give his films a slightly shaky effect. This trait is also present in “Oldboy”. However, the movement and the angles he uses are very subtle, and the presence of the particular medium does not become so obvious, as it was in “The Blair Witch Project”, for example.

Furthermore, the handheld camera gives a more direct view of the scene to the audience, actually making them think that they are a part of the movie. This trait is most eloquently presented in the final sequence, when Dae-su learns the truth and is actually filmed with a handheld camera as he crawls and begs.

The same trait applies to Kim Sang-beom’s editing. Apart from the aforementioned scene, his editing is wonderfully portrayed in a scene at the beginning of the film, when Dae-su wakes up inside a briefcase on a rooftop, and meets a man with a puppy, who is about to commit suicide.

Despite his intentions, Dae-su saves him and then tells him his story. The man seems to empathize, and after Dae-su has finished he tries to tell his story, but Dae-su leaves him standing. The next cut shows Dae-su on the street and the man crashing from the rooftop onto a car.

Author Bio: Panos Kotzathanasis is a film critic who focuses on the cinema of East Asia. He enjoys films from all genres, although he is a big fan of exploitation. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter .

The Ending Of Oldboy Explained

Directed by Park Chan-wook, 2003's "Oldboy" is a neo-noir thriller that also stands out as being one of the best Korean movies of all time . "Oldboy" is loosely based on a manga created by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi, and the film makes up the middle part of Park's vengeance-themed trilogy . The story centers on a man named Oh Dae-su who's imprisoned in what amounts to a small hotel room for 15 years. When Dae-su is finally released, he begins searching for answers and seeking vengeance against the man who captured him.

Decades later, the film is still stunning for its incredible action, brilliant directing, and a plot that no one could have seen coming. "Oldboy" inspired a 2013 remake by Spike Lee that has some big differences from the original and failed to match up to Park's masterpiece, but the attempt just goes to show how influential "Oldboy" has been over the years.

If you've recently seen the film for the first time, your head is probably still reeling from its intense ending. But even if you saw "Oldboy" back when it was first released, you'd be forgiven for struggling to make sense of every plot thread and story nuance. Here's the breakdown that completely explains the ending of "Oldboy."

Did Lee Woo-jin's plan really work out?

With all the twists and turns that make up the plot of "Oldboy," it can be easy to lose track of the grand master plan that has entirely derailed Oh Dae-su's life. Once he's released from his prison, Dae-su becomes consumed by revenge, and his life revolves around finding and killing the man who imprisoned him.

Dae-su's tormentor, Lee Woo-jin, is equally as compromised by his emotions. When they were in school together, Dae-su witnessed Woo-jin fondling his sister and inadvertently started a rumor about the two of them that spread through the school and caused Woo-jin's sister to take her own life.

Woo-jin doesn't just want to ruin Dae-su's life. He wants to make Dae-su experience all the shame, rage, and hatred that he's lived with all this time. He trapped Dae-su in a prison only so he would never witness his daughter growing up. Then Woo-jin used hypnotism to manipulate Dae-su into sleeping with his own daughter, believing that put the two of them on an equal footing. By the end of the film, Woo-jin is dead, and Dae-su is completely free, but in reality, that was Woo-jin's plan from the very beginning.

How did Lee Woo-jin make his fortune?

No part of Lee Woo-jin's plan could work without money. It's no small task keeping a man imprisoned and well-fed for 15 years, but that might not even be the most expensive piece of the entire scheme. Woo-jin also needed to pay a hypnotist, an entire gang of thugs, and a team to set up such intense surveillance on Dae-su and his family that he knew every intimate detail of their lives. All of that doesn't even account for the many times Woo-jin must have needed to pay a dry cleaner to remove blood from his suits.

Considering what else happens throughout the film, the question of how Woo-jin was able to pay for any part of his plan seems unimportant, but even though the movie doesn't give a direct answer, the hints we're given say a lot about Woo-jin's character. Woo-jin is a competent businessman, and ironically, his profession isn't all that different than Dae-su's before he became imprisoned. The two of them both worked in professional corporate settings, and if Dae-su hadn't been locked up, he may have become as successful as Woo-jin. In his quest to ruin Dae-su's life, Woo-jin probably never even realized how alike the two of them are.

What happened to Oh Dae-su's wife?

On the night that Oh Dae-su is taken captive, he and his wife are supposed to be together celebrating their daughter's birthday, but he's drunk and out on the street. The scene establishes that while Dae-su has a family, maybe he's not the greatest father. Then, 15 years later when Dae-su has finally gotten free from his prison, he discovers that his wife is dead and that his daughter has been adopted by a Swedish family.

The realization hardly seems to faze Dae-su, but maybe that's just because some deep part of him is aware that it isn't true. By the end of the film, we learn that Dae-su has really been with his adult daughter since the night he left the prison. However, Lee Woo-jin never reveals what really happened to Dae-su's wife.

One way or another, it seems likely that Dae-su's wife died sometime in the years he was imprisoned. It's tempting to think that Woo-jin had her killed, but if that were true, he probably would have bragged about it to Dae-su, and killing Dae-su's wife really has nothing to do with his plan overall, anyway. It seems more likely, then, that Dae-su's wife died more or less naturally, and Woo-jin just took that as an opportunity to advance his plans. He may be evil, but he also definitely has a streak of good luck running through his adult life.

Was Park Cheol-woong really Lee Woo-jin's ally?

Park Cheol-woong sitting surveillance monitors

Park Cheol-woong owns and operates the secret prison that houses Oh Dae-su for 15 years. It's made clear that his prison has a wide range of customers, but it also seems that Oh Dae-su is his longest-term prisoner, which would make Lee Woo-jin the prison's biggest client. On top of agreeing to imprison Oh Dae-su for such a long period of time, Park Cheol-woong does a few other tasks for Lee Woo-jin throughout the film. He attacks Mi-do in her apartment, and later he brings Mi-do the box that holds her terrible family secret. However, even though he frequently does Lee Woo-jin's bidding, it's better to think of Park Cheol-woong as the criminal equivalent of a contract laborer than a true co-conspirator.

At the beginning of the film, Park Cheol-woong doesn't have any investment in the plan to torment Oh Dae-su. He's nothing more than a shady businessman, and for the right price, he'll do whatever he's asked. Lee Woo-jin never even reveals why he wants to have Oh Dae-us imprisoned. When Dae-su attacks Mr. Park after he's free, Mr. Park hands over all the information he has without question. After Dae-su rips Mr. Park's teeth out, the prison warden has more of a personal vendetta against him. Even then, though, he's just riding on Lee Woo-jin's coattails, never helping to create new twists in the plans himself. At the end of the day, Mr. Park is just a criminal opportunist who made the most of what came his way.

Was Lee Woo-jin's sister really pregnant?

The core of Lee Woo-jin's hatred of Oh Dae-su has to do with his sister. When Dae-su begins recovering his memories from school, he recalls seeing Woo-jin and his sister kissing and fondling each other in an empty classroom. Dae-su tells his friend No Joo-hwan, and that ultimately sparks a rumor that spreads through their entire school.

When Woo-jin finally confronts Dae-su about what happened all those years ago, he tells a confusing version of the story. Woo-jin neither confirms nor denies what Dae-su saw but instead insists that the rumor continued to evolve after Dae-su left school, eventually becoming so rampant that his own sister came to believe she was pregnant with Woo-jin's child. The rumor itself, Woo-jin seems to believe, caused her pregnancy.

Could his story be true? There are two possibilities here. There's the chance that Woo-jin's sister actually did get pregnant and then he convinced himself that Dae-su's rumor worked some kind of magic. Woo-jin then used Dae-su as a scapegoat, and his hatred of the man allowed Woo-jin to go on believing he had no role in the event that led to his sister's death. It's also possible that his sister was dealing with pseudocyesis, aka "false pregnancy," where a person believes they're pregnant, and there are even physical symptoms, but there's no actual fetus. Whatever the truth, it spurred Woo-jin's anger and resulted in one of cinema's greatest acts of revenge.

Why didn't Lee Woo-jin kill Oh Dae-su?

Lee Woo-jin had nearly endless opportunities to kill his arch-enemy. He had Oh Dae-su trapped and within reach for over a decade, but once Oh Dae-su was back on the street, killing him still would have been easy for Woo-jin. However, even after Woo-jin revealed his entire plot to Dae-su — and Woo-jin's bodyguard Mr. Han was prepared to kill the man — Woo-jin spared his life.

Dae-su survived through the end of the film because Woo-jin was never able to move past his childhood shame. Even though he blamed Dae-su for his sister's death, deep down he knew that he was just as responsible for what happened to her. Woo-jin tricked Dae-su into sleeping with his own daughter, then revealed that information to him, because he believed that putting Dae-su in a similar situation as his own would finally free him from his shame.

Woo-jin's plan was never going to end in Dae-su's death, no matter how much he threatened it. All along he believed his plan was about torturing Dae-su, making him just as miserable as Woo-jin had been in the years following his sister's death. In reality, though, Woo-jin's plan was all about making Dae-su share in his own shame.

Why did Lee Woo-jin go through with killing himself?

After Lee Woo-jin reveals the full truth to Oh Dae-su and completely breaks down his enemy, his plan is complete. Everything that he's been hoping to achieve for decades has been accomplished, so you'd expect him to be elated or at least a little pleased with himself. Instead, after sparing Dae-su's life, Woo-jin steps into his personal elevator, pulls out a gun, and ends his life.

Woo-jin's actions throughout the film were so destructive, it's hard to imagine he would have been able to return to a normal life. Even with all his resources and money, it's likely Woo-jin would have been caught and made to answer for his crimes, though Woo-jin didn't end his life just to avoid the consequences of his actions.

Woo-jin had built his entire adult life around the idea of finding and punishing Dae-su. With his lengthy revenge quest finally complete, Woo-jin realized he had nothing else to live for. He had no friends, no family, and no real motivation to pursue his career outside of funding Dae-su's torment. On top of that, with Dae-su ruined, Woo-jin could no longer hide from his own involvement in his sister's death. In Woo-jin's final moments, all the grief and guilt surrounding his sister's death comes back to the surface and pushes him over the edge.

Did Oh Dae-su really forget everything?

After Lee Woo-jin dies, Oh Dae-su is free to live out the rest of his life, but he can't bear to go on knowing that Mi-do is really his daughter. Luckily for Dae-su, he lives in a strange reality where hypnotism is accessible and — based on his own experience at Woo-jin's hands — highly effective. Dae-su does the only thing he can imagine and tracks down the hypnotist who erased his school day memories and set him up to fall in love with his daughter, so he can ask her to manipulate his mind once again.

In the scene with Dae-su and the hypnotist, he gives her a sheet of paper telling her what he wants, and she helps him split his personality in two: "The Monster," who dies knowing a terrible secret, and Dae-su, who gets to live out the rest of his life in peace. The audience is never shown exactly what Dae-su requested of the hypnotist. Did she erase Dae-su's memory of sleeping with Mi-do, or did she erase his knowledge that Mi-do is his daughter?

Either way, Dae-su still retains some of his memories. Considering that when he goes to the hypnotist, Dae-su believes that Lee Woo-jin spared Mi-do from knowing the truth, it seems like a strong, albeit unsettling, possibility that Dae-su simply erased the truth of Mi-do's identity from his mind, so he could put the two of them on the same page.

Does Mi-do know the truth?

Part of Lee Woo-jin's plan involved telling Mi-do that she is Dae-su's daughter. Woo-jin even hired Park Cheol-woong to deliver a gift-wrapped box to Mi-do and to ensure that she opened it when Woo-jin wanted her to. At the last moment, as Dae-su begs and pleads at Woo-jin's feet for him to spare Mi-do from the truth, Woo-jin tells Cheol-woong that he can leave without making Mi-do open the box.

The next time Mi-do is on-screen, she's found Dae-su out in the woods after the hypnotist altered his mind. She's seen comforting Dae-su, and the film ends with the two of them holding each other in the snow. Mi-do doesn't say one way or another if she looked inside the box, so the audience is left wondering how much she really knows about everything that happened throughout the film.

There's no strong reason to think that Mi-do knows the truth. Woo-jin is undoubtedly evil, but he's also seemingly been a man of his word throughout the film, so it's safe to assume that he wasn't lying when he said Mi-do would be spared. For his part, Cheol-woong has no motivation to disobey Woo-jin's orders. Outside the context of the film, director Park Chan-wook has described Mi-do as "somebody who is not privy to the truth," so it's likely that by the end of the film, Mi-do is completely in the dark.

What happened to the hypnotist?

The hypnotist is one of the most mysterious characters in "Oldboy." She has borderline supernatural powers that dramatically impact the course of the story, but she also doesn't seem particularly aligned with anyone else's goals. She worked for Lee Woo-jin when he needed her, but she also agrees to help Oh Dae-su at the end of the film, despite the fact that he can't have access to much money after being imprisoned for 15 years. She's also the only character in the movie who never gets involved in violence of any kind.

It seems like the hypnotist will use whatever excuse is available to practice her abilities, whether that means helping people or ruining their lives. She's looking out for herself, and beyond practicing hypnotism, she has no obvious goals. At the end of the film, Oh Dae-su is alone in the woods with the hypnotist having vanished after she erased his memory. All that's left of her is an empty chair. She's more of a supernatural force than a real human being, and she's probably gone off to find her next opportunity to manipulate someone's mind just for the sake of doing it.

What do Oh Dae-su and Mi-do do now?

The ending of "Oldboy" leaves plenty of room for the audience's imagination to get to work. Oh Dae-su and Mi-do are reunited, but Dae-su is missing a tongue, and his mind has been warped by the hypnotist's constant manipulation. The two of them may not be able to return to a "normal" life, but they're probably going to have a much more mundane existence after the credits roll.

Neither Dae-su nor Mi-do knows that they're related when the film ends, so they probably stay together. Dae-su is in such bad shape that when they make it back to the city, Mi-do will probably have to take care of him as she did at the beginning of the film all over again.

In the best-case scenario, their relationship will go on to be more like that of a caregiver and a patient, and Mi-do will go on to experience a full life while doing her best to make sure Dae-su is comfortable. In the worst-case scenario, the two of them will pick up their romantic relationship, living out a life that's maybe similar to what Lee Woo-jin had hoped for himself and his sister. Both endings are unsettling in their own way, but that's why "Oldboy" has had such a lasting impact .

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by callin g 1 -800-273-TALK (8255).

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

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COMMENTS

Oldboy movie review & film summary (2013)
Like Park's version, this one's a reptilian brain film, all violence and sex and fear and revenge and crying and screaming. The lighting is dark but the colors are supersaturated, especially in scenes with a lot of blood, neon, or wet pavement. The camera goes much lower or much higher than you expect it to, and peers at the characters from ...
Oldboy
Oldboy. Dae-Su is an obnoxious drunk bailed from the police station yet again by a friend. However, he's abducted from the street and wakes up in a cell, where he remains for the next 15 years ...
Korea's 'Oldboy' digs deeper than average mystery/thriller movie review
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.
Oldboy (2013)
Oldboy. Although his life is already in a downward spiral, things get much worse for advertising executive Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin) ; while drunk one night, Joe is kidnapped and thrown into ...
Oldboy (2003 film)
Oldboy (Korean: 올드보이; RR: Oldeuboi; MR: Oldŭboi) is a 2003 South Korean action-thriller film [4] [5] 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 resembling a hotel room for 15 years without knowing the identity of his captor or his captor's motives.
Extremely Grotesque: Park Chan-wook on Oldboy
August 16, 2023. 9 min read. In the 20 years since it was first released, Park Chan-wook 's "Oldboy" has lost none of its ability to provoke and enthrall, none of its potency as a work of art that deploys graphic violence and equally visceral style to probe the depths of human nature. The masterpiece that propelled South Korean cinema ...
Oldboy (2013)
Oldboy: Directed by Spike Lee. With Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley, Samuel L. Jackson. Obsessed with vengeance, a man sets out to find out why he was kidnapped and locked into solitary confinement for twenty years without reason.
Oldboy
Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Oct 4, 2019. Zoe Rose Smith JumpCut Online. Oldboy is so much more than an action film; it takes the viewer on a journey through a life destroyed, rebuilt and ...
Oldboy: Film Review
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. November 26, 2013 9:17am. It would ...
Oldboy
Oldboy - Metacritic. Summary An advertising executive is kidnapped and held hostage for 20 years in solitary confinement. When he is inexplicably released, he embarks on an obsessive mission to discover who orchestrated his punishment, only to find he is still trapped in a web of conspiracy and torment. [Film District]
Oldboy (2013 film)
Oldboy is a 2013 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by Spike Lee, written by Mark Protosevich, and starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, and Sharlto Copley.It is a remake of the 2003 South Korean film of the same name.It follows a man (Brolin) who searches for his captors after being mysteriously imprisoned for twenty years. Oldboy was released theatrically in the United States ...
Oldboy Review
Verdict. Ultimately, Oldboy isn't an entirely worthless film; it is an unnecessary one. Brolin, Jackson, and Olsen's portrayals are compelling and more than worthy. Unfortunately, Copley, who ...
Oldboy (2003)
Oldboy: Directed by Park Chan-wook. With Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jeong, Kim Byeong-Ok. After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must track down his captor in five days.
Oldboy
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 (2013) Movie Review
Our review: Parents say (3 ): Kids say (7 ): Spike Lee has never devoted his vicious talents to a pure exploitation film before. But his hard, brutal OLDBOY tackles that mind-bending, subversive story without flinching.
'Oldboy' Is Still Shocking
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 ...
Old Boy (2003) Movie Review
A classic cult film reminiscent of Greek tragedies. 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 Movie Review
Parents Need to Know. Parents need to know that Oldboy is renowned director Park Chan-wook's second addition to his "Vengeance Trilogy," released after 2002's Sympathy for Mr Vengeance. It has extremely mature sexual themes related to incest, a sustained graphic sex scene, and nudity (breasts and bottoms). Several vicious….
'Oldboy' Is an Unflinching Look at Human Nature
The 2003 film Oldboy (Oldeuboi), a Korean production directed by Park Chan-wook, is one of those disturbing explorations of humanity that leaves you with something akin to a post-Lynchian (good Lynch) hangover that lingers for several months after viewing (for context I saw the movie in September of 2018 and I am still processing it). At first I was completely shocked and disturbed -- a little ...
'Oldboy' Ending Explained: Is Revenge Really Worth It?
To give some context surrounding the climactic ending of the film, Oldboy is a South Korean film directed by Park Chan-Wook that focuses on the journey of a man named Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik ...
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Rated. R. Runtime. 119 min. Release Date. 11/21/2003. (Note: Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Park Chan-Wook's cinematic masterpiece, Oldboy will be released in theaters, restored and remastered in stunning 4K, on August 16. This essay is a newly edited and expanded version of one published on March 23, 2009.)
6 Reasons Why "Oldboy" is a Modern Masterpiece of South Korean Cinema
Chung Chung-hoon's cinematography does wonders in the presentation of the complexity of the story and the intense aesthetics Park wanted to give the movie. Apart from the corridor scene, Chung uses bright colors, intentional grain, and color saturations, in an effort to match the extreme nature of the story without physically exhausting the ...
The Ending Of Oldboy Explained
The Ending Of Oldboy Explained. Directed by Park Chan-wook, 2003's "Oldboy" is a neo-noir thriller that also stands out as being one of the best Korean movies of all time. "Oldboy" is loosely ...
Queer review: Daniel Craig is 'heartbreaking' in this explicit gay
When Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name came out in 2017, the director was criticised for the coyness of the two male lovers' sex scenes. Even the film's screenwriter, James Ivory, argued that ...