Old Boy

Old Boy is surprising and savage, but I don’t quite get the ridiculous amounts of love being showered on it. It’s almost as if the film looks better on paper. Director Chan-wook Park’s visual style is interesting, but hardly the explosion of orgasmic artistry it’s being touted as. The homemade Kung-fu fighting is  wire-free, and enjoyable. The story is certainly original and fresh, but also full of holes and inexplicable jumps that require intuitive leaps of logic to catch up. The story’s pieces don’t all fit neatly together, though the character motivations driving it do.

What most sells it is the no-holds barred attitude Park Chan-wook takes to the film. He’s willing to do anything to get your attention. The result is moments like one in which Dea-su devours a live octopus. Chan-wook’s camera lingers on him as the tentacles wriggle and wrap around his mouth, an external symbol of the lead’s tortured madness. The movie’s final dilemma is equally shocking, a razor sharp knife of pain and self-sacrificing loathing into which Oh Dea-su readily flings himself, misery be damned.

In between Oh Dea-su’s escape and the film’s sadistic ending, there’s a bit of a sag in which the movie wanders around with love interests and exposed breasts. But the stomach turning ending makes it easy to forget how goofy the villains sometimes seem and makes that lull in the middle feel shorter than it actually is. I didn’t forget, others did. Perhaps that explains all the international furor. Old Boy is a compelling and ambitious film that journeys into stark territory. Flawed and prone to gaps in logic though most of it may be, it’s worth some attention as a unique endeavor topped off by a punch in the gut, unpredictable ending.