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Written by: Garon Tsuchiya, Nobuaki Minegishi (manga), Park Chan-wook, Joon-hyung Lim, Jo-yun Hwang (screenplay)
Directed by: Park Chan-wook
Starring: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jeong
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-su is released, only to find that he must track down his captor in five days.
Verdict
It's a tale or revenge, but more thorough than the average movie. Oh Dae-su is out for vengeance, but we discover that he was imprisoned as an act of revenge. While the premise is intriguing, it's how dark the story becomes that makes this memorable. Oh Dae-su's quest for retribution ends up consuming him completely in a way that few people could ever anticipate. While he confronts his captor, he's completely broken in the process.
Watch It.
Review
I first watched this years ago when I was on a Korean revenge sub-genre kick, also watching I Saw the Devil, Lady Vengeance, and Mother.
We first see Oh Dae-su at the station sloppy drunk. He's loud and obnoxious, while trying to get back to his daughter. He disappears in the night, and we later see him imprisoned. It seems years have passed. We don't know who imprisoned him and neither does he. The question is why. Will he be trapped forever? If they're keeping him alive for this long it must be for a reason. We first wonder if in a drunken state, that you'd guess happens often, he irritated someone too much, but this is extreme.
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| Choi Min-sik plays Oh Dae-su |
The only thing he has is television. As he states it's his calendar and entertainment. We see snippets of his imprisonment, training to fight and giving himself something to pass the time. He seeks vengeance, and that helps him survive each day. He wonders who did this. It had to be someone he wronged, and there are many people that could be. After fifteen years of stuck in a single room he wakes up in a footlocker on the roof of a building. While he's finally free of his prison, he's still isolated. Oh Dae-su saw on the news that he was framed as a fugitive.
His first adventure is a street fight. He wonders if ten years of imaginary training is adequate. It is. Next he enters a sushi restaurant before fainting. The chef takes him in, but I have to wonder why and why she seems to like him? He's obviously disturbed. He's a different person now than before his imprisonment, now driven by revenge. He tracks down his prison, an apartment building that entraps people at length for wealthy clients. He irritates a few people that run the apartment and has to fight his way out. The corridor scene is something else. It's a notable scene in the movie.
Oh Dae-su finds a tape and hears his captor, but he doesn't know the guy. This same guy then calls him and promises to kill anyone Oh Dae-su loves. That means the chef helping him. They seem to fall for each other rather quickly. You get why he would with no human contact for years, but you'd think she would be wary of a guy in so many fights that brings so much trouble. I suppose some of that is just movie magic where the hero gets the girl.
I give this movie credit, while it's a revenge tale it has plenty of twists. The premise alone is enough to hook you. Trapped for revenge and then he escapes ready to return the revenge. Oh Dae-su manages to find his tormentor and confront him. That's where his captor reveals the plan. He doesn't just want revenge, he wants to really hurt Oh Dae-su. The question Oh Dae-su should have asked isn't why he was locked up but why he was released. The revenge against Oh Dae-su is so thorough it completely breaks him, more than anyone or anything could. We've seen this guy fight his way out of crazy situations, but the mental torture is too much. It's this reveal that makes the movie. Anyone that's seen this movie won't forget the conclusion.
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