Thersites Writes

I watched Oldboy last weekend... And came away much in the same state that I did after watching The Baby Of Macon or Last House On The Left. It's not so much a film as one of those Catholic pilgrimages where you flay yourself and wear sack cloth: a director's pompous desire to punish his audience rather than stimulate it, for some unknown higher purpose.

What starts out as an interesting action film/thriller degenerates into a pretensious slough of improbability, flat and univolving characters, silly histrionics and the sense that director Park Chan-Wook is a depressed nihilist, in the style of Thomas Hardy, who wants everyone else to feel the same way.

I suppose the film's point is the futility of revenge, but that's all very well when the director seems to be wagging a finger in the face of the audience for daring to enjoy the protagonist, Dae-Su, get his own back. You can't help feeling that Park is too defeated and unhappy to face up to his monsters so punishes his character and the audience for engaging theirs. He probably realised, too, that the film was getting to be too enjoyable, so threw away some of the most interesting ideas and concentrated on being bleak, morbid and obscure. The 'twist' was also plain silly and contrived.

It's not half as good as it claims, is a depressing chore to watch and isn't much more than a day out for a director's hobby horse. No wonder the fanboys loved it - pretensious and masochistic crap always impresses the pseuds. It's also vague enough to project your own self-congraulatory readings onto it, but I think that's more down to Park's limitations as a director than any grand plan on his part.

All in all, avoid.