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Written by Hwang Jo-yun, Chun-hyeong Lim Joon-hyung Lim and Park Chan-wook; directed by Park; starring Min-Sik Choi. Currently available on DVD Over the last decade, we’ve seen dozens of so-called thrillers more interested in the ‘how’ than the ‘why’. While the continuously bigger and better murder machines in movies like Saw and Taking Lives may keep you guessing over the running time of a film, they have no impact at all once you leave the theater. If you doubt this, quick, name any characters in any Ashley Judd thriller. All these run-of-the-mill films care about is throwing the viewer more double crosses, and stretching the suspension of disbelief to its breaking point. Everyone wants to create the next The Usual Suspects or Seven but they try to do it by copying these film’s devices instead of actually writing new characters. Along comes an already cult classic Korean film to show American filmmakers what they’ve been doing wrong. Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy starts with a drunk man, Oh Dae-su, thrown in a small room and then, fifteen years later, without warning, thrown back out. What’s more important — blind revenge or knowing why? If given a choice, would you rather kill the man who ruined your life or find out why he did it?  The true genius of Oldboy, beyond its excellent art direction and riveting lead performance (by Min-Sik Choi), is that Park turns the audience into active participants in Oh Daesu’s search for answers. Park constantly uses a visual device that forces the viewer to fill in the gaps. It goes like this — shot of hammer; shot of head; shot of body on the floor. It’s not too hard to figure out what happened between the last two shots. It’s a simple but very effective technique used throughout the film, from the little action sequences to the bigger arc of the plot, where the audience becomes an active participant, filling in the holes with the hero. Like David Fincher remaking a film from the peak of John Woo’s career, Oldboy careens from extreme violence to love story to human drama to comedy to mystery and amazingly never loses its footing. It may be cluttered with different styles but Park makes them all work by grounding them in his characters. By writing a thriller that’s character-based, Park helps us to become more interested in why things are happening, not just the "who did it and how" routine of the average entry in the genre. | |||||
