OLDBOY (RECOMMENDED)

Though comparisons to the films of Quentin Tarrantino will abound, Park Chanwook's Oldboy, a twisted and bloody revenge mystery, owes far more to Sam Peckinpah and David Fincher in terms of substance and style. Driven by over-the-top emotionalism, this South Korean import is a ferociously violent, compellingly twisted and thoroughly modern re-imagining of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count Of Monte Cristo.

On the night of his daughter’s third birthday, drunken businessman Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is kidnapped and imprisoned in a seedy hotel room with only a television to connect him to the outside world. Locked away for fifteen years, he fights to maintain his sanity (when not attempting suicide) while his mysterious captors frame him for the murder of his wife. Then, one day, they inexplicably set him free.

Left with nothing but a feral hunger for revenge, Oh-Dae-su stalks the streets of Seoul like a deranged Job desperate to find out who ruined his life and why. He recruits the help of a young woman (Gang Hye-Jung) and an old high school chum to put together the complex (and not always logical) puzzle pieces that reveal his sadistic adversary’s devilish plan.

Choi, (baring an uncanny resemblance to Charles Bronson) is outstanding, expertly transitioning from simmering rage to wounded grief, often within the same scene. His ability to make the most outlandish plot contortions believable keeps the film from collapsing under its overly contrived weight.

Director Chanwook indulges in the kind of blood-boiling passion found in Classic Greek Drama or Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. He pushes the envelope of histrionics and brutality to epic proportions. The damage done to tongues and teeth, not to mention familial love, will challenge even the hardiest filmgoer. Still, he is a skillful and creative filmmaker, able to create visually stunning moments and gritty actions scenes that deliver a visceral punch. A single-shot fight sequence where Oh Dae-Su battles a hallway full of gangsters, armed only with a hammer, has to be seen to be believed.

Oldboy offers so much emotional intensity and brutal velocity that it’s hard not to get caught up in its convoluted maze of revenge, punishment, and karmic retribution. It has the kind of dramatic momentum that most Hollywood thrillers strive for and few achieve.