
Choi Min-sik stars as a man, Dae Su, who is held captive in a sealed apartment for 15 years. He never sees his captor, and never learns the reason for his imprisonment — nor why he’s kept alive, for that matter. Then, just as inexplicably, he’s free. He sets about tracking down his tormentor — keenly aware that he’s still being toyed with.
Oldboy is as original and exciting a slice of pure cinema as any film fan could dream of. There are images here which will boggle your mind. Not least, a notorious scene when Choi gobbles down a recalcitrant live octopus. Then there’s the fight scene where Dae Su takes on 20 men in a single unbroken take… Along with the work of Bong Joon-ho, this was a signal that Korean cinema would be an exciting force in world cinema in the 21st century.
Oldboy makes us feel a part of something bigger than ourselves. It’s a grand, gritty, indelible experience, the sort of picture that mimics great literature in the way it envelops you in a well-told story while also evoking subtle but strong gradations of emotion. Oldboy begins as a revenge fantasy and evolves into something much more complex and redemptive. It’s a thrilling picture, and in places a funny one, yet it can’t be classified as an action picture or a comedy — it’s too infused with tragic poetry to be so conveniently buttonholed. Oldboy is a viscerally charged picture, and an exceedingly beautiful one, but its beauty springs directly from its anguish. It’s like a flower watered with blood.
Stephanie Zacharek, Salon
Shakespearean in its violence, Oldboy also calls up nightmare images of spiritual and physical isolation that are worthy of Samuel Beckett or Dostoyevsky.
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
A lurid, complex, introspective beast, enacting astonishing cruelty on its protagonist like a slow-acting poison.
Kambole Campbell, Little White Lies
Park Chan-wook
Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jeong
South Korea
2003
In Korean with English subtitles
Grand Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival
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Credits
Executive Producer
Kim Dong-ju
Producer
Kim Dong-joo, Lim Seung-yong
Screenwriter
Park Chan-wook, Lim Chun-hyeong, Hwang Jo-yun
Cinematography
Chung Chung-hoon
Editor
Kim Jae-beom, Kim Sang-beom
Original Music
Jo Yeong-wook
Production Design
Ryu Seong-hie
Also in This Series
These movies speak to our times and push the boundaries of the art form — the true modern classics we’re confident will withstand the test of time.
In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar-wai's most acclaimed and popular film is a love story about two neighbours (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung) who are drawn together by the long absences of their respective spouses + a newly released short companion piece from 2001.
Oldboy
The second movie in Park's Vengeance Trilogy. Choi Min-sik stars as Dae Su, inexplicably held captive by he-knows-not-who for 15 years, and then, just as inexplicably, released. Not surprisingly, after all this time, he has only one thing on his mind...
Children of Men
2027: 18 years since the last baby was born, disillusioned Englishman Theo (Clive Owen) becomes an unlikely champion of the human race when he is asked by his former lover (Julianne Moore) to escort a young pregnant woman out of the country.
The Headless Woman
The pictures tell the story -- and you better not blink -- when Veronica (the superb Maria Onetto) hits something on the road home. But what? She is too traumatized, or panic-stricken, to go back and look, and her fears are too terrible to acknowledge.
A Serious Man
The Coen brothers' best movie is a painfully funny existentialist comedy about a physics professor, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlberg), benumbed but bewildered by his wife's announcement that she wants a divorce. That's only the start of his troubles.
Paprika
A device capable of transmitting dreams falls into the wrong hands in this dazzling anime meta-movie from visionary filmmaker Satoshi Kon. The imagery here is never less than overwhelming; it's probably the greatest scifi movie of our times.
Under the Skin
Between Birth and the death camps of Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer gave us sex, with Scarlett Johansson, picking up and disposing with interchangeable men. It's a bleakly unforgettable movie, with a mesmeric Mica Levi score.
It's Not Me
“Where are you at, Leos Carax?” To this question, the French filmmaker assembles an unpredictable essay-film made in the spirit of the late Jean-Luc Godard — an endlessly inventive self-portrait of an artist reflecting on his place in cinema history.
Holy Motors
Carax's film a dazzler, a requiem for cinema that somehow breathes new life and new hope into the form. Denis Lavant (Beau Travail) plays 11 roles and the accordion. Absurdist, surreal, poignant and unforgettable, this is truly one of a kind.
Enter the Void
Venturing where angels fear to tread, virtuoso filmmaker Gaspar Noé (Vortex) creates a dazzling journey into the Tokyo night, a mind-bending exploration of the outer reaches of human experience inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Margaret
Seventeen-year-old Lisa is rocked with guilt after a woman is killed in a traffic accident. But that’s only one thread in a teeming social tapestry this intense, passionate teen must negotiate as she comes of age in a time of contradiction and confusion.
Certain Women
Spare, incisive portraits of four Montana women (Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone) brushing up against the everyday wears and tears of difficult men, their own circumstances, and the desire for something better.
Moonlight
Moonlight is many things -- a portrait of a young black man coming of age in Miami in the 1980s, a film about fathers and sons, about mentorship and about the scourge of drugs -- but it is also one of the most piercing movie romances of the last decade.
Lady Bird
Greta Gerwig's first film as writer-director is a delightful, painful comedy about "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), a Sacramento teen on the point of swapping high school for college, and her hard-working mom, Marion (Laurie Metcalf).
Silence
This sober, probing examination of faith, ego, cruelty and compassion is the most underrated film from the often under-valued latter half of Martin Scorsese's brilliant career; a passion project, about Catholic missionaries in 17th Century Japan.
Synecdoche, New York
Charlie Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- all great, all successful -- then turned director with Synecdoche, which is a masterpiece and which basically went unseen. It's overdue rediscovery.