Artist Oldboy

If revenge is a dish best served cold, then Park Chan-wook’s deliriously unhinged Oldboy is an unthawed Hungry Man TV dinner. The film stars the intense Choi Min-sik as an ordinary Seoul businessman who wakes up from a drunken bender to find himself locked up in a mysterious apartment for reasons unknown. After 15 years, he’s unexpectedly released, but the reasons for his liberation are just as vexing as those for his incarceration. Heading the current vanguard of extreme Korean cinema, Park marries the vibrant style of Hong Kong action movies to the disturbing psychosexual undercurrents running through many new films from his native country. 

Updated 11/09/2009