Oldboy: One of My All Time Favorites

Old What?

When people talk about mystery movies (the ones with a big twist in the plot that no one saw it coming), they generally talk about The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, Se7en, Chinatown and even Memento. In my opinion, Oldboy beats all of these movies by a mile in the suspense department. The ending is as good as The Shawshank Redemption's but not that sweet.

The reason why this movie never gets mentioned I suppose is because it's a Korean movie. Therefore, no publicity. And rumor has it that Hollywood is trying to do a remake of this. How sad! Before they ruin it for you if you haven't watched this already, let me give you some of my thoughts on this wonderful, surreal and brutally hard hitting mystery movie which you shouldn't miss if you are sure that you won't die of heart attack. Believe me, not everyone could take this movie. It will hit you so hard in the end that you'll feel like your skull is cracked by a sledge hammer.

Oldboy: A former male pupil of a school (Wordweb).

The protagonist, Oh Dae-su, is locked up inside a prison for a number of years and suddenly released one day. No one tells him why he was jailed. So, he goes on a quest to find out why. To take out his revenge only to find out that the antagonist, Woh-Jin Lee, has a bigger revenge to take against him.

Why was he jailed? Who takes the revenge? How? At what cost? That is the mystery.

This movie has amazing music. Some of them are so melodic, some very melancholy and some just can't be expressed in words. I'm not exaggerating, it's really _that_ good. And they are all played according to the situation of the movie. That's what makes some of the movie scenes so emotional.

Also, this movie isn't something that can happen in real life. It's more surreal and for me that's the aspect which makes this movie beautiful at times. There are a few things which you should just ignore and not look at it with a magnifying glass. For example, you should believe that people can be hypnotized. Simply get over these thoughts if they should occur to you.

I'm not a great critic about camera work. In fact, I know nothing about it. But that doesn't stop one to admire the beauty of the camera work that's shown in this movie. My favorite is the one at the end but to talk about that, I've to reveal the secret. No. I won't. But there's another fight scene that happens in a corridor that connects a door and an elevator. The camera angle here was absolutely stunning and beautiful. It's also well complimented by the music as always in this movie that goes on in the background during the fight scene. Pay close attention here. It's almost magically beautiful.

I came to know that the Bollywood film Zinda was a terrible attempt to rip off this movie. I was surprised at first. But then I came to know that they didn't copy the ending, thankfully. So, if you've watched Zinda, you must see this. You'll know how bad these guys are at copying; let alone creating something original.

Again, this movie is not for everyone. If your heart is weak, stay away. If you like thrilling suspense stories and you can take mental torture, you're in for one heck of a movie. It's one of the very few movies I've given a 10/10 rating on IMDb. And I'm very harsh when it comes to rating movies. Don't miss it.