'Revenge is good for your health' is the provocative statement skewered through the flesh of Oldboy, a stylish, morally sophisticated symphony of vengeance that knocks Kill Bill into a big silly cocked hat.
Average guy Dae-su Oh (Min-sik Choi) is coshed on the way home from a sake or two. He wakes to find himself inexplicably incarcerated in a private en-suite bedroom/gas chamber and watching a TV news report framing him for the murder of his wife and daughter. For the next 15 years, Dae-Su picks through the wall with a chopstick, battling insanity with a passion to discover 'why?'.
Sadistically inventive nastiness (squeamish readers be warned: there's live octopus-munching and dental torture) is pretty much par for the course in modern Korean cinema. But what lifts director/writer Chanwook Park's Cannes Grand Prix-winner out of the Asia Extreme niche is not just the utterly compulsive mind-games set-up but a hard whack of real substance.
Defending his new girl, a sushi chef called Mido (Hye-jung Kang), Dae-Su discovers another self - 'I've become a monster' - as well as some dark truths. Entirely outclassing the over-pretty, over-hyped, 'Miramax presents' Hero, this is the future of Asian cinema. Shove over, Tarantino, a new master's in town.
Oldboy
Cert: 18
