"Oldboy"

There are several Japanese and other Asian produced films that concept wise really fascinate me and make me want to watch them, but I also I'm a little timid to do so because they have a reputation of being unsettling. I think some American horror film directors would argue that Japanese cinema is probably producing the most innovative films out there right now, which is why almost all of the current American horrors films are remakes of Japanese ones.

"Oldboy," which is actually a Korean film, not Japanese, was a film I heard about because it was on Bravo's countdown list of "30 More Scariest Films" and was intrigued by the story but never really sought it out to watch. This weekend it popped up on my OnDemand menu and I decided to give it a whirl, because if I found I couldn't handle it it wouldn't be a waste of money to not watch all of it.

After seeing it, I wouldn't classify it as a horror film, but more of a morality play about how a sin that is insignificant to you could be very profound to someone else. It actually won the grand prize at Cannes one year and is a very well done film about revenge and redemption. Visually it is a very beautifully done film and the dialogue (even with having to go by subtitles) was both dark, angsty, but humorous in places too.

Dae Su, the protagonist, is kidnapped one night and held hostage in this little hotel-like room with no explanation as to why or who is holding him there. Then, with just as much explanation, he is released after fifteen years and sets out to find and exact revenge on the people who took those fifteen years away from him.

There's an internal struggle with in Dae Su between the man he used to be, who wasn't the greatest person in the world, but still an average guy, and the monster that the isolation and need for vengeance has turned him into.

Along the way he meets a young woman, barely eighteen, who takes him in and who falls in love with him. She, Mi-do, begins to help him in trying to find the people who did this to him and to locate his daughter that was only three when he was taken.

Unknown to either of them, all of this is an elaborate revenge plot by a man, who Dae Su doesn't even remember from his youth and Dae Su learns that his fifteen years of captivity was not his real punishment, but the events he is manipulated into after his release.

There are definitely some difficult parts to watch, but if you can get through those it really is worth seeing and is an excellently done film that isn't afraid to explore how a quest for revenge can turn you into this monster that has no moral compass and leaves you capable of doing horrible things that you otherwise wouldn't. Of course, once one has had his vengeance the question is: do I have anything to live for now? For one character the answer seems to be no, where the other seems to find some sort of redemption. The ending, though on some level happy, is also a little disturbing. I don't want to give anything away just in case any of you decide to watch it.

A little side note for my LOCI friends: there is a scene where Dae Su eats a live octopus and the tentacles do in fact try to go up his nose -- EWW.