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Oldboy/ Old Boy
(18)
© Egg Pictures - all rights reserved
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| Tookey's Rating |
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4 /10
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| Average Rating |
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7.50 /10
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| Starring |
Choi Min-sik  , Yu Ji-Tae, Kang Hye-jeong |
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Directed by: Chanwook Park
Written by: Hwang Jo-yun, Lim Chun-hyeong, Park Chan-wook, based on a manga comic strip by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi
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| Tookey's Review |
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| Pro Reviews |
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| Mixed Reviews |
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| Anti Reviews |
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| Cast |
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| Released: |
2003 |
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| Genre: |
COMIC STRIP
OVERRATED
FOREIGN
THRILLER
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| Origin: |
Korea |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
120 |
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A kidnap victim Dae-su (Choi Min-sik, pictured right) seeks revenge after being locked up for 15 years by an anonymous enemy.
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Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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Oldboy contains the expected ingredients of Korean “extreme cinema” – an incoherent storyline, acting that swings between the deadpan and the hysterically melodramatic, and characters so blank that it's hard to feel anything for them.
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There’s plenty of the obligatory nastiness too – tongue-slitting, skull-hammering, dental torture and (worst of all) the consumption on camera of a live, wriggling octopus.
If your gag reflex can survive such excesses – it’s easy to see Quentin Tarantino’s influence on this winning the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival - there’s a reasonably ingenious denouement, centred on brother-sister incest, that is reminiscent of 17th century Jacobean revenge drama at its crudest.
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Oldboy has moments of shock and erotic tension, and director Chanwook Park displays the visual flair that won him admirers among the pseudo-sophisticated for his Seeking Mr Vengeance; but I found it a very long, hard slog, bringing no emotional reward.
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