Oldboy is one of my favorite movies ever and it needs to be here for sure. The original Korean film, directed by Park Chan Wook is a vicious story of vengeance and determination. Like the rest of his ‘Vengeance Trilogy’ [Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005)], it epitomizes a great deal of what this blog is trying to tease out - pathos, vulnerability, perserverance, etc. And this is the BEST fight scene ever.
We meet the central character, Oh Dae-su, as a drunken and disorderly man in a police station waiting area for someone to pick him up and take him home to his family. He is not an extraordinary man, and except for a drunkard’s charm, largely uninteresting. But, for seemingly no reason, he is abducted and imprisoned by unknown captors for fifteen years. At the end of his captivity, he is released to begin the journey of finding his captor. The story now is one of revenge and we follow Dae-su and Mi-do – a sympathetic sushi chef with whom he falls in love - on a trail of clues to a final climax when the hero learns of his oppressor and the reason for his imprisonment- no spoilers.
Apparently, a new version is going ahead by Steven Spielberg that adapts the story from the original manga comic, not the Wook film. That may be the big failure part.
'American Old Boy won't be offending anybody and will instead be a pretty standard noir/revenge story where Will Smith has to track down the guys who done him wrong, and we never have to worry that he's going to do something really terrible like ____ his ________ or ___ ___ his own ______. America, you're safe.' - Chud.com
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