Oldboy

I'm not a huge foreign film guy. I've enjoyed them before but I definitely don't watch them nearly as much as Western films. Oldboy was put on my list because a good friend of mine recommended it for years. Plus, a part of me wanted to check out the 2013 Spike Lee remake even though I've heard it wasn't that good, but I couldn't watch a remake if I haven't seen the original. At least not in this case.

Oldboy is a Korean film following the story of a man by the name of Oh Dae-Su (played by Choi Min-sik). At the start of the movie, he is a drunken fool who just isn't a very great person. But very

quickly, he is kidnapped and held in an apartment as a prison for 15 years. Before he was imprisoned, he had a wife and daughter that had no idea what happened to him after he was imprisoned.

You can tell that the grasps on sanity aren't totally kept by the end of his 15 years in captivity and his only window into the outside world is a small television.

Dae-Su starts plotting his revenge to get to the people that imprisoned him for 15 years and starts training before he is eventually released. When the day does come that he is released, Dae-Su goes on a journey to find the people responsible, figure out why they imprisoned him, and ultimately kill them once he knows the truth.

The first day he is released, he meets a young woman by the name of Mi-Do (played by Kang Hye-Jung) and the two of them go on a sort of Bourne Identity mission to find out the truth.

What follows is actually a really interesting story with great visuals, a lot of twists and turns, and pretty good acting from the cast. While I say it's kind of like the Bourne Identity, that's more of a frame of reference for the revenge plot line in the story when really it couldn't be anywhere near that.

There are some really great action sequences, but this is not actually a full fledged action movie. It's a lot more of a mystery thriller and focused more on the drama and secrets being held from Dae-Su and the lost 15 years of his life.

Again, I don't watch a lot of foreign films. Nothing against them in general, they're just not usually my style and I need to be in a totally focused mood to watch them, especially if there are subtitles. Now that might be your style of film, but you should just be aware of what you're getting into before you jump into Oldboy.

The biggest issue I have with this movie is the pacing.

The first act of this movie, you basically think that this is just going to be a revenge flick where he suffers during his time in prison and then he's going to go out and just kill everyone in his way to finding the bad guy.

But that's not actually what this movie is about, but there's a weird in between phase where the movie is just trying to get to the point where it becomes intriguing and the mystery starts unraveling.

Before that, it's a pretty standard action revenge flick and the transition to the mystery and the pacing by which it finally gets to that last act is really wonky. I was pretty close to actually giving up on this movie and just skipping it all together because besides some pretty cool visuals, I thought I knew how this was going to end.

However, you have to keep watching.

This is a very cerebral film. You have to recognize that before you start this movie. There are a lot of really great visuals and it's a very distinct movie than anything you've probably ever witnessed before and the visuals and transitions definitely work into that.

It's kind of hard to explain this movie and why it's so psychologically mind bending because it really doesn't pay off until the very end where it looks back on everything you've just watched and suddenly starts to make you question it all. However, that makes it very difficult to review so this might be a pretty short review.

The big things to touch on.

This movie is a very hard R. The violence is graphic, the subject matter is pretty heavy, and there are some actually very graphic nudity and sex scenes in the film.

With the wide variety of films I've been reviewing, I feel like I should point that out. I mean I reviewed Angry Birds earlier this month, this is definitely a change of pace from that.

Like I said before, the pacing is the biggest issue with this film. I thought it was going to be a lot more of an action film than it actually is and that made the movie very slow. Don't think you're going to be getting a lot of action in this film. The action you do get is good, but besides the scene in the hallway where it's one continuous shot of him beating up a bunch of guys, the action is kind of lacking.

The movie is acted pretty well. I think because it's a Korean film some of the choices are more of an industry thing rather than good or bad acting but overall I was always at least a little bit invested in figuring out who this guy was and why he was imprisoned.

And finally, the most important thing to mention about Oldboy is that the ending does pay off. It may not feel like it will, but the end will shock you and it does make the movie come together very nicely.

Is this movie going to be for everyone? Probably not, what movie is. But if you're looking to delve into the foreign film realm, this might actually be a good way to start.

On top of it all, you get to see the main character eat a live octopus. Like legitimately, there is a scene where he eats a live octopus and you see the tentacles moving, it's actually kind of impressive.

But those are my thoughts on Oldboy. What did you think of it? Are you a big foreign film fan? Are there any foreign films that I definitely need to check out? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.