Product Description

Oh Dae-su is an ordinary Seoul businessman with a wife and little daughter who, after a drunken night on the town, is abducted and locked up in a strange, private prison. No one will tell him why hes there and who his jailer is and his fury builds to a single-minded focus of revenge. 15 years later, he is unexpectedly freed, given a new suit, a cell-phone and 5 days to discover the mysterious enemy who had him imprisoned. Seeking vengeance on all those involved, he soon finds that his enemys tortures are just beginning.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7216 in DVD
• Brand: OLDBOY
• Released on: 2005-08-23
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: Korean
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Amazon.com
In the realm of revenge thrillers, you'd be hard pressed to find more ultra-violent vengeance and psycho thrills than in the creepy story of Oldboy. This Korean import made a pop splash at the Cannes Film Festival and during its limited theatrical run thanks to the imprimatur of Quentin Tarantino, who raved about it and its visionary director, Chan-wook Park, to anyone who would listen. It's easy to see why QT fell in love with the grindhouse attitude, fast-paced action, violent imagery, and icy-black humor, but it's a disservice to think of Oldboy as another Tarantino homage or knockoff. The darkly existential undercurrent in the themes that Oldboy traces over its life-long narrative arc is much more complex and deeply disturbing than anything of its kind. The movie's tagline is, "15 years of imprisonment... 5 days of vengeance." The imprisonee is Oh Dae-Su, an ordinary Joe who is snatched off a Seoul street corner and locked away in a dank, windowless fleabag hotel room for the aforementioned 15 years. Just as abruptly he is released, and thus the five days begin. Why did this happen to Oh Dae-Su? Ah, but that would be telling, and in fact we don't know ourselves until the final wrenching scenes.

Oldboy breaks into a classic three-act saga, the first of which details the hallucinatory period of imprisonment in which Oh Dae-Su wades from mild insanity to outright psychosis in the hands of unseen yet attentive captors. Act 2 is the revenge, when an entirely different tone takes over and Oh Dae-Su moves with single-minded purpose and clarity. It's this section that has gained the most notoriety, primarily for the claw-hammer dentistry scene, the one-man-army tracking shot, and the wriggling octopus that Oh Dae-Su consumes in a sushi bar (he's been dead so long he simply needs life back inside him in any way possible). In act 3, answers finally start to emerge and the sinister atmosphere grows even more profound--not without a healthy dose of extra bloodletting, of course. Oldboy is an undeniably poetic masterpiece of tension, fury, and dynamic craft. Ultimately, its epic cycle of tragedy is of the sort that mankind has been inflicting upon itself for all time. Some of the images may be gruesome, but all converge into a kind of beauty. It's in the telling of this lurid tale that these details become one and the memories of pain ultimately heal. --Ted Fry

From The New Yorker
A man named Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is imprisoned in a room for fifteen years, not by the state but by the anonymous bearer of a grudge. On his release, he goes in search of revenge, with the aid of a fetching sushi chef. Upon this unusual plot, which manages to seem at once slender and wholly implausible, the South Korean director Park Chanwook has constructed a highly wrought, low-lit piece of gothic, worrying away at our senses without pausing to check that his story makes any sense. Scenes branch off one from another in a gruelling phantasmagoria that is best approached in a spirit of bitter comedy, or after a few drinks; if you want to follow the progress of subcutaneous insects, or to see a man ingest a live octopus, then this is the movie for you. There is no doubting the finesse of the director's eye, or the calmness with which even his most savage sequences are composed, but the result feels unappealingly pleased with itself, trapped in its obligation to shock. As for the solution to the mystery, don't wait up. In Korean. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Brutally Raw & Brilliantly Inspiring Revenge Film...
Oldboy has a Shakespearian tone as it depicts the tale of Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi), whose name means "he who can get along with people". Oh Dae-su is on his way home after having been arrested for public drunkenness to celebrate his daughters birthday. However, Oh Dae-su never arrives to his home as he is kidnapped and imprisoned in a small room where his only contact with the human world is a television. During the time Oh Dae-su is caged someone murders his wife and he becomes the prime suspect for the murder. The questions that Oh Dae-su unsuccessfully attempts to answer while locked up is why revenge is being taken on him and who is seeking this cruel revenge. After 15 years Oh Dae-su is released from his torturous imprisonment, which leaves him confused and ragingly vengeful.

Chan-wook Park directs a brilliant cinematic experience that is full of well-written conspiring intrigues that will keep the audience in suspense. The suspense is initiated in the opening shot where a man is hanging over the edge of a roof top causing the audience to asks themselves--why is this happening? The suspense continues as new and mysterious clues appears, but apprehension does not leave the audience even after the end of the film as the final line echos in the minds of the audience. Park's vision of revenge in Oldboy often depicts exaggerated violence that is well balanced with story as it is related to the themes of the film. However, this should serve as a warning to squeamish folks as the film is occasionally brutal and bizarre. Furthermore, the cinematography used in Oldboy vividly projects the emotional tone of the cinematic themes and characters. The characters are also superbly performed by an excellent cast, which will help the audience to experience a first class cinematic event.

Do I deserve life?


Some films just do not allow themselves to fall into generalizations and these films pose conundrums when one tries to explain them. I've owned _Old Boy_ for a number of months now, but for some reason or another I had been able to make myself sit down and watch the film. For some reason I thought it was a horror film and being that I generally do not care for horror films I let this one sit on the sidelines while I watched other films. However, I was finally inspired to watch this film when my Korean office partner told me how much she enjoyed the film, been amazed by Choi Min Sik's acting, and how long the film stuck in her head after watching it. Trusting my friend's taste in film, last night I finally settled down to watch the film and similar to my reaction with other films that I had underestimated, I wondered: Why the heck had I had not watched this film earlier?

The film begins with a drunken Oh Daesu, Choi Min Sik, sitting in the police office. He is a noisy drunk heaping abuse on the police officers and constantly trying to urinate on the floor. He tells the police to let him go because it is his daughter' birthday, but when his pleas fall on death ears, he becomes even more recalcitrant to remain calm in the police office. Eventually Daesu's friend comes to pick up his inebriated friend. However, while talking to Daesu's daughter on the phone, the friend notices that Daesu is missing.

Daesu finds himself imprisoned in a room that resembles a cheap motel room. Fed a diet of dumplings and with a television as his only companion, Daesu will live for fifteen years inside of that small room. Occupying his time watching television, punching the walls, writing the names of all who might have had him imprisoned in that room, watching television, and carving a hole in the wall with a metal chopstick, Daesu grows older his youth withered away within that room. However, one day, he finds himself on top of a building finally free to hunt the individual who had imprisoned him. Daesu eventually makes a new friend in the personage of the young sushi chef Mido, Gang Hye Jeong, who for some reason seems to fall for Daesu as he consumes a live squid, who accompanies him on his search for the individual who ruined his life.

This is an extraordinary film. Choi Min Sik's acting is top notch and one can really feel his anger and frustration inside of his prison. I won't go into details here, but his performance during the final minutes of the film must be witnessed to be believed. The music is grand and the special effects are nicely done. The ant poking through Daesu's skin is very creepy.

A mind-bending, disturbing revenge flick
Oldboy's beginning had me excited for the rest of the film. I mean it is a great beginning. Oh Dae-su is kidnapped from the middle of the street one night, and we then learn through his narration that he will be in his cell for the next 15 years. We go through the journey with him, seeing the time pass by as he finds ways to get himself through each day. Then, miraculously, he is released one day for what appears to be no reason whatsoever. Once he is released, he sets out to find his captors. The only clue he has is the food that he ate on every single day for the past 15 years, so he goes to every restaurant named Blue Dragon until he tastes the food he knows so well. Once he finds out where he was kept, he has to find out who and why, and that is where the film goes crazy.

The twists at the end of this film are some of the best I can think of from recent film history. Not only is the subject matter hard to handle, but the film also features some horrible scenes of violence, and one scene where a live octopus was definitely harmed in the making of the film. While I'm not in love with this movie (it definitely slows down after the beginning), it is more interesting and original than a lot of stuff that our country has put out recently. And it was definitely good enough for me to check out the other two parts of Park's vengeance trilogy.