When my vengeance is over, can I return to being Oh Dae-su?
At first, the only thing I knew about Chan-wook Park's Oldboy was that it was the film Quentin Tarantino campaigned to give the Golden Palm the year he was president of the jury at Cannes, but he was outvoted and it went to Fahrenheit 9/11 instead. (Oldboy had to make do with the Grand Prize, which is no small consolation.) Later on I learned that Oldboy was the middle film in Park's "Vengeance Trilogy," which made me think it might be worth seeking out Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance first. Well, I've had a few years to do just that, but the Sundance Channel threw a wrench into my plan by airing Oldboy early this morning, so I decided that -- as with the Decline films -- it wouldn't hurt to see these out of order, either.
Co-written and directed by Park, and based on a popular Japanese manga, the 2003 film stars Min-sik Choi as a seemingly harmless man who is kidnapped and held captive for 15 years (during which time he is framed for his wife's murder) and, when he's mysteriously released, methodically tracks down the people responsible for his incarceration so he can exact his revenge. The trouble is his tormentor (Ji-tae Yu) isn't through with him yet, especially after Choi falls into a rather convenient relationship with sushi chef Hye-jeong Kang. As it turns out, Yu has a very personal reason for wanting to destroy Choi's life and he's rich enough -- and clever enough -- to make it happen in such a way that it's not only inevitable, but also vaguely poetic. My only real regret about waiting so long to see this is that I already knew about one of its big reveals (which I won't divulge here), but Oldboy isn't the kind of story that relies on its twists to be effective. It's just a damn good film, period.