Actors: Min-sik Choi, Hye-jyong Kang
Director: Chan-wook Park
Considering the ratings I've been giving out, it would be easy to say that I am a too-lenient critic. While Brazil could've easily been given 3½ stars, and Doubt likewise, don't let the rave reviews for everything fool you: this is a great film.
Three things I want to cover:
If I had to make a choice between destroying all the films in the world, or destroying all the books in the world, it'd be easy: so long The What Have You, you're now a George Eliot blog. The printed word is a much better framework to discuss ideas - with film, there's seventy things going on at once, and it's hard for me to imagine a discussion on even a particular film being focused. Film has its virtues, and one of its greatest is the ability to quickly jump between time without all sorts of explanation - more like the way our own minds operate with memory and imagination. Oldboy takes advantage of what film has to offer, making fabulous use of flashback and flash forward.
In a certain genre of film - noirs and comedies especially - the movie's pleasurable climax is often in the first third of the film. By the end, I'm just waiting for the film to play out the string so I can go do something else. Oldboy bucks this trend - the film got better and more interesting as it went along.
Last, and there's some very minor spoilers, but here is the facepalm-worthy summary of Oldboy provided by Netflix: "With no clue to how he came to be imprisoned, drugged, and tortured for 15 years, and no one to hold accountable for his suffering, a desperate businessman seeks revenge on his captors, relying on assistance from a friendly waitress." This is worse than the summary on the back of The Big Lebowski, which states that the Dude's rug really made the room 'hang together'.
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I don't know if I've ever reacted to another movie the way I did to Oldboy. I went in thinking it might be just a cool revenge/action/thriller (I probably read the same description as you), so I was totally unprepared for what happened. When it was over my friend and I both sat silently staring at the blank screen for a few minutes because neither of us had any idea what to say. It really didn't seem like there was any point in saying anything.
ReplyDeleteIt's also one of the few movies (Being There is another; I hope you review that one too) that I still think about frequently a couple of years after seeing it.
As I'm sitting here thinking about it, I'm starting to realize it might be my favorite movie ever. I need to watch it again soon.
And now that you've seen it, doesn't the idea of Spielberg and Will Smith remaking it seem completely absurd?
you're giving out good ratings because you're watching quality movies.
ReplyDeleteExcept that, like most people who give out ratings on a numerical scale, you aren't using the whole range to your advantage. The difference between 4 and 4 1/2 is clearly much greater than between 1 and 1 1/2.
ReplyDeletere: oldboy - i actually had zero expectations, i really try to avoid reading anything about a movie i'm about to see. it's funny, i read a lot of reviews of it after seeing it, and a lot of them are like 'post-tarantino, without substance', and i'm just wondering what film they watched. i can see spielberg loving some aspects of the film - especially the streak of sentimentality and loss that runs through the entire thing. i don't think will smith is going to be eating live octopi or taking out people's teeth with a hammer, but you know what, american audiences should see this movie, even if there are alien nazis thrown in.
ReplyDeletere: ratings - really? i would actually say the opposite - that the difference between 1 and 1½ is larger, just that it's not a very important difference since the movie still sucks.
I heard about this movie from some other friends as well. I'm gonna check it out.
ReplyDeleteI just want to point out that the summary on the back of recent editions of The Big Lebowski (or on the Netflix site) is not so much intended to summarize the film, but to remind the potential purchaser or renter of funny things from it which they might not immediately remember.
ReplyDelete