Old Boy is my favourite film. As far as I can see, no amount of superlatives could explain quite how much I love it. After my first viewing, (all on my lonesome) I realised I probably hadn’t blinked during its entirety and I could quite possibly have been burgled during its course and been none the wiser, such was the extent to which I found it totally and utterly engrossing. Obviously a review consisting of very little other than me spewing praise would be a fairly dull read which was why I never bothered to review Old Boy until after my second viewing, with my Po’. My father being the eternal sceptic that he is turned out to be an extremely worthy person to watch the film with, and his response to it opened my eyes a little as to why I love it that much.
The plot itself is as follows. The protagonist Oh Dae-Su is one day captured and finds himself locked up in a makeshift prison. After a brief spell of anger and spewing hatred for his captors, he resigns himself to his fate, and after 15 years of shadow boxing and suicide attempts he wakes up from a gas induced coma on top of a tower block where he was initially seized. He then proceeds to try and find out who did this and why, and the film basically charts this quest.
The first word that springs to mind when thinking about this film has to be graphic. There are certain scenes which will make those of nervous disposition recoil until they are firmly wedged between the back and seat of their sofa, and they are likely to spend much of the film there as violence is frequent. In most of the extreme cases it is simply the implication of violence and the viewer’s imagination when left to its own devices like this will cause its own disgust. This hurdle was a huge thing problem for my dad, who considered some of the violence to be gratuitous, which I can somewhat agree with, although certain scenes are completely integral to the plot. The best way I can justify these scenes is simple. It is all about sending a message, and these do just that. If you can cope with this then you will break down the initial barrier the film leaves lying in the way of your enjoyment.
Another barrier will be the massive culture shock experienced when viewing the film. This is a Korean language film adapted from a Japanese animé series, so there are obviously large cultural differences to the western world. Some of the images used will require quite some thought to fully understand, and the script on translation does lose some of its flow, as any animé or graphic novel fans will associate with. For my father, this made it hard for him to settle into the flow of the film, and I can identify with this slightly from my early days of watching animé.
Many of the themes you will pick up on and the method of direction is very synonymous with Quentin Tarantino. There are devices used in this film which have obviously taken inspiration from Tarantino’s works, in particular the Pulp Fiction- esque use of camera angles, and the famous dotted line sequence. However, Tarantino is himself a huge fan of Old Boy, being its main advocate to win the 2003 Palme d’Or (where it eventually lost out to Fahrenheit 9/11) and has stated Park Chan-Wook as an influence for his directing style on the Kill Bill series, as well as on his later grindhouse works Death Proof and Planet Terror. Chan-Wook takes on a policy of “trust the director”, and leaves many questions throughout the film which gives it a somewhat disorientating feel at times. This method of directing can seem quite inaccessible, however all loose ends are tied up very satisfactorily in the enthralling and shocking climax. This is an ending to rival the classic Kaiser Sozé twist in the tail of The Usual Suspects.
What really separated and elevates Chan-Wook’s work above and beyond Tarantino’s however is very simple. Much of Tarantino’s work is undertaken as an exercise in direction and film making, and therefore his work can therefore feel shallow. Old Boy however is a film which assesses the deepest corners of the human heart. The middle of three films which make up Chan-Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy it is undoubtedly the masterpiece, with a more powerful message than Lady Vengeance and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. This film has power because of the depths to which it explores the flaws and forces the human heart possesses, stronger and more destructive than any wisdom can overcome. The performances of the main cast and most importantly the director to send this message to the viewer leave this film as about as close to perfection as I can see any film getting.
