I finally finished watching Old Boy for the second time, didn’t really see the last time I was seeing it. It is one of the goriest revenge movies that I have seen. If you liked Kill Bill, you will love this movie as well. Basically, the movie is about a guy, Oh Dae-su, who after a night of crazy drinking, gets kidnapped and locked up for no reason. He is locked up in a prison that looks like a decent hotel room for fifteen years. A great line two months into his captivity, “If they had told me it was going to be fifteen years, would it have been easier to endure?” So, after fifteen years of being locked up, Oh Dae-su is set free, still with no explanation as to why he was locked up or why he was set free. The rest of the movie is his story and how he tries to figure out who had him locked up, and more importantly, why he was locked up.
During this whole process, we get some crazy scenes. Two really stand out. In one, he tortures the manager of the prison he was at by pulling his teeth out using a claw hammer. Just think about this… using a claw hammer to remove teeth. The following scene has Oh Dae-su fighting a whole slew of people in crazy corridor fight sequence. Not is the movie a visual treat, the soundtrack works really well with it. It got a lot of range, going from symphonic music, to electronic to (near)ambience.
Overall, this movie is excellent, definitely not for the faint of heart. Like I said before, this is like Kill Bill. In Kill Bill the blood and gore seemed a little fake, and overly animated, Old Boy is very realistic. If you like these type of movies, check it out.
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