a5c7b9f00b On the day of his daughter's birthday, Ho Dae-su gets completely drunk and is arrested. His best friend No Joo-hwan releases him from the police station, and while calling home from a phone booth, Dae-su vanishes. Indeed he has been abducted and imprisoned in a room for fifteen years. One day, he is suddenly released, receives clothes, money and a cellular and meets the Japanese chef Mido, and they feel a great attraction for each other. However, Dae-su seeks for his captor and the reason of his long imprisonment. While looking for revenge, Dae-su discloses deep secrets from the past. An average man is kidnapped and imprisoned in a shabby cell for 15 years without explanation. He then is released, equipped with money, a cellphone and expensive clothes. As he strives to explain his imprisonment and get his revenge, Oh Dae-Su soon finds out that his kidnapper has a greater plan for him and is set onto a path of pain and suffering in an attempt to uncover the motive of his mysterious tormentor. Oldboy was the first film that i have seen of the director Chanwook Park and for me this one of the best films of this decade.<br/><br/>The film is about a man that is kidnapped and after 15 years is finally out. He has now money, a cellphone and other stuffs but he want to know the reason of his kidnapped and have a revenge. But what he don't know is that this 15 years was the revenge against him.<br/><br/>This plot is one of my favourite stories ever and the way Chanwook Park make the film, with an intense beginning and a violent and amazing end is nothing but great.<br/><br/>Of course a film like this is not for all audiences but i highly recommend this film to anyone who loves Asian films and loves Quentin Tarantino's films because Oldboy won fame at the Cannes Film Festival and also distribution in all the world because Tarantino gave Oldboy the grand prize of the jury. I don't care if it won prize but i know that if Oldboy doesn't be in Cannes maybe in Mexico this film wasn't in DVD region 4<br/><br/>So in few words: Oldboy is a modern masterpiece and for me is one of my favourite films of this decade. The plot outline provided by IMDb is quite inaccurate.<br/><br/>The protagonist disappears without a trace one rainy night after a boozy night.<br/><br/>He is not jailed and paroled. He is kidnapped, drugged regularly and kept imprisioned for 15 years without ever getting an explanation until he manages to escape (or so he believes).<br/><br/>Once outside he plots revenge against his captors, but without suspecting why he runs into a cute, young girl he has seen on TV (that became his only contact with the outside world) which will eventually play the biggest part on the protagonist's fate in unsuspected, chilling ways.<br/><br/>The movie is quite a wild ride and will be infamous for its moment of gastronomic audacity and madness.<br/><br/>Although the plot thickens quite a bit in towards the end and some of the propositions are a bit stretched, some questions posed by the movie are quite interesting: would you be happy living without knowing terrible truths? Is love without reserve always a good thing?<br/><br/>The movie has some quite realistic (for East Asian cinema tastes) fight scenes in which the hero beats gangs of young assailants, in contrast with Chinese action movies or even some Hollywood action movies, the protagonist is badly beaten, dragged and humiliated until the point of self destruction.<br/><br/>But at the end he prevails. Kind of... Put simply, in my humble opinion, Oldboy sucks. Oldboy is based loosely on a Japanese manga Old Boy, written by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya. Oldboy, the film, is the second installment of The Vengeance Trilogy, preceded by Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and followed by Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. No, the ending is totally different. There are new characters involved, and the ultimate cause for Wojin's revenge is not the same as in the movie.
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