This weekend in Washington, Oldboy, the year’s best release in America, will grace theaters, and viewers will never be the same. If this year passes with a film better than Oldboy, it will have been an amazing 2005. This film is what’s hot in foreign films, so this installment will be a leg up on the in-development American remake starring Nicolas Cage (which will no doubt be some sort of twisted joke).
A Korean production, Oldboy is a nauseatingly nervy suspense story like nothing you’ve ever seen. Protagonist Oh Dae-su is an average wife-and-kids type. When the camera first fixes on him, he’s being held by police for public drunkenness. Unknown abductors later hold him in solitary confinement without an explanation. Trapped in a hotel room with only a television and an occasional meal (with a side dish of knockout gas), Dae-su finds himself going insane.
After a whopping 15 years, Dae-su is released for no apparent reason, and with a chunk of his life missing, he’s now unhinged and looking for vengeance. Little does he know, his abductors are anticipating his every move with sadistic glee.
In these culture wars in which aspects of sexuality have been decreed indecent, cinema has responded with a renaissance of truly gruesome violence. While many picketed against films such as Kinsey, and mature sexual fare such as Closer was ignored at the box office, audiences have celebrated the cause of the likes of The Passion of the Christ and Kill Bill. It’s no wonder the year’s three best films, the fever-dream, martial arts epic Ongbak, the comic adaptation Sin City and now Oldboy, celebrate violence without shame.
Oldboy, however, is not escapist fare. The violence runs deep, and during the shocking third-act revelation many viewers will be forced to re-evaluate their enjoyment of the previous hour and a half. Make no mistake, this ending will blindside you, and you will walk out of the theater moved, frightened and VERY disturbed. Nonetheless, Oldboy is a powerhouse thriller, guaranteed to crawl inside your head and never leave.
