Oldboy
Rent/Purchase
With no clue how he came to be imprisoned, drugged and tortured for 15 years, a desperate man seeks revenge on his captors.
What critics thought
Park Chan-wook's revenge thriller commands wide respect two decades on, with its corridor fight sequence and operatic ugliness earning it a place on nearly every serious best-of list — but the original critical response was more fractured than its reputation suggests. Where enthusiasts saw a formally daring deconstruction of revenge fantasy, detractors saw shock tactics dressed up as philosophy.
“We are so accustomed to 'thrillers' that exist only as machines for creating diversion that it's a shock to find a movie in which the action, however violent, makes a statement and has a purpose.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“anguished, beautiful, and desperately alive”
Stephanie Zacharek·Salon.com
“a bloody and brutal revenge film immersed in madness and directed with operatic intensity”
Sean Axmaker·Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“The fact that Oldboy is embraced by some cinephiles is symptomatic of a bankrupt, reductive postmodernism: one that promotes a spurious aesthetic relativism (it's all good) and finds its crudest expression in the hermetically sealed world of fan boys.”
Manohla Dargis·New York Times
“a sadistic masterpiece that confirms Korea's current status as producer of some of the world's most exciting cinema”
Jamie Russell·BBC
Genres
Action, Drama, Mystery
Cast & Crew
DirectorPark Chan-wook
StarringChoi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung, Kim Byeong-ok, Ji Dae-han
ComposerChoi Seung-hyun, Shim Hyun-jung, Lee Ji-soo, Jo Yeong-wook
Oldboy
With no clue how he came to be imprisoned, drugged and tortured for 15 years, a desperate man seeks revenge on his captors.
What critics thought
Park Chan-wook's revenge thriller commands wide respect two decades on, with its corridor fight sequence and operatic ugliness earning it a place on nearly every serious best-of list — but the original critical response was more fractured than its reputation suggests. Where enthusiasts saw a formally daring deconstruction of revenge fantasy, detractors saw shock tactics dressed up as philosophy.
“We are so accustomed to 'thrillers' that exist only as machines for creating diversion that it's a shock to find a movie in which the action, however violent, makes a statement and has a purpose.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“anguished, beautiful, and desperately alive”
Stephanie Zacharek·Salon.com
“a bloody and brutal revenge film immersed in madness and directed with operatic intensity”
Sean Axmaker·Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“The fact that Oldboy is embraced by some cinephiles is symptomatic of a bankrupt, reductive postmodernism: one that promotes a spurious aesthetic relativism (it's all good) and finds its crudest expression in the hermetically sealed world of fan boys.”
Manohla Dargis·New York Times
“a sadistic masterpiece that confirms Korea's current status as producer of some of the world's most exciting cinema”
Jamie Russell·BBC
Genres
Action, Drama, Mystery
Cast & Crew
DirectorPark Chan-wook
StarringChoi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung, Kim Byeong-ok, Ji Dae-han
ComposerChoi Seung-hyun, Shim Hyun-jung, Lee Ji-soo, Jo Yeong-wook
Rent/Purchase