Oldboy (2003)
Did Quentin Tarantino dirty up the rest of the world's cinema with pulpy, cheesy torture fluff? Oldboy is like Pulp Fiction meets Disney mass entertainment...
It starts off very promising with Dae-Su (Min-Sik Choi) doing a damn funny drunk...then it gets even cooler when it goes psych-surrealistic with Dae-Su mysteriously imprisoned in a curiously decorated room. That all too brief first act reminded me of The Truman Show. I'd give that first 45 minutes a 4/5. But once he's out of his personal prison the reveal of what was going on bored me. I had hoped we'd find out that his prison room was all in his own head, or perhaps he was in a mental ward and had hallucinated the other life. But the revenge, action, torture stuff is crap to me and reminded me of Pulp Fiction. I'm not generally a fan of Korean movies, the ones I see seem like Korea's version of the Hollywood blockbuster, big on action and cheap thrills. I like movies that feed the soul and the mind. I don't care for movies that are the equivalent of deep fried pork rinds.
It starts off very promising with Dae-Su (Min-Sik Choi) doing a damn funny drunk...then it gets even cooler when it goes psych-surrealistic with Dae-Su mysteriously imprisoned in a curiously decorated room. That all too brief first act reminded me of The Truman Show. I'd give that first 45 minutes a 4/5. But once he's out of his personal prison the reveal of what was going on bored me. I had hoped we'd find out that his prison room was all in his own head, or perhaps he was in a mental ward and had hallucinated the other life. But the revenge, action, torture stuff is crap to me and reminded me of Pulp Fiction. I'm not generally a fan of Korean movies, the ones I see seem like Korea's version of the Hollywood blockbuster, big on action and cheap thrills. I like movies that feed the soul and the mind. I don't care for movies that are the equivalent of deep fried pork rinds.