Oldboy
Director: Park Chan-Wook
Year Released: 2003
Rating: 2.5
A man is imprisoned in a holding cell that looks like a middle-American living room for fifteen years for reasons he's not aware of - once freed, he takes after his captors with stylish black attire, wild rock star hair and a hammer. As a story of revenge it's more of the same - the concept is rarely given much depth, except in something like The Night Porter - but there are flashes of transgression (prying out a man's teeth one by one with the aforementioned hammer, eating a live octopus) as well as abundant screaming and hysteria; it both comes together and falls apart in the overly descriptive final act (which does contain a twist I did not expect). Though excessive, it certainly tries hard to keep things moving.
