Oldboy ★★★★

PARK Chan-wook’s Oldboy was one of the films that started a new wave of fascination with South Korean cinema.

The country has continued to produce some of the most audaciously entertaining films of the past two decades.

Aside from its technical bravura, Oldboy (2003) also presents a nightmarish story you will never forget.

For the totality of the first act we are with main character Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) who is arrested for public drunkenness and embarrasses himself at the police station.

On his release Dae-su, a married businessman, is kidnapped and kept imprisoned in a room for unknown reasons for 15 years.

While captured he descends close to insanity but also learns how to defend himself.

Suddenly he is released and sets about solving the mystery and having revenge for something that has happened while he was locked up.

Along the way he finds himself still being manipulated by unknown tormentors and falls in love with a young sushi chef, Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung), who tries to understand his plight and assist him.

The film includes one of the best action sequences in modern cinema – a corridor battle that became the template for literally hundreds of attempts to replicate its contained ferocity.

There is also the infamous live octopus meal and of course the devastating climax of Shakespearean proportions that few films have been achieved since.

Oldboy is cinema at its most beautiful, horrifying and compelling.

You have to experience it once in your movie-watching life.