Oldboy (2003) film review

Film: Oldboy (2003, Egg Films, Show East)

Director: Chan-wook Park

Writer(s): Jo-yun Hwang, Chun-hyeong Lim, Chan-wook Park, Joon-hyung Lim

Cinematography: Chung-hoon Chung

Editor: Sang-beong Kim

Score: Hyun-jung Shim

Producer(s): Dong-ju Kim, Seung-yong Lim

Starring: Min-sik Choi, Ji-tae Yu, Hye-jeong Kang

Oldboy trailer

Try to imagine; you're out on the street minding your own business when you're suddenly snatched away, placed in a secure room and imprisoned with no reason or explanation for 15 years. Then one day you are suddenly and just as mysteriously released. This is the premise behind Chan-wook Park's Oldboy which sees our protagonist Dae-su Oh (Min-sik Choi) in this unenviable situation. What follows is an ambitious, violent, poetic, vengeful, twisty and twisted film which defies easy categorisation. For the purposes of this review I'll call it a revenge thriller but it's much more than that.

When we first meet Dae-su Oh he's drunk and disorderly at a police station and making an absolute fool of himself. A friend comes to pick him up and while his friend is on a payphone Dae-su Oh disappears. His subsequent incarceration is in a one room cell with a bed, TV and a faux window. The door is reinforced steel with a slot to deliver food through at the bottom. Someone brings him food and he begs and pleads with them to let him out or at least tell him why he's been imprisoned like this. 15 years pass by and he has become slightly unhinged; this is illustrated by his many foiled suicide attempts, his pounding the wall with his fists in an attempt to train in fighting and in one skin crawling scene he has a hallucination about ants crawling out of his skin and all over his face. It is also compounded by the fact that he learns from the TV that his wife has been murdered and he has been framed for it. Someone wants him to hurt and seethe, but why?

One day he wakes up inside a large suitcase on top of a building in fresh clothes and with a wallet full of money. The film then becomes a kind of whodunnit mystery as he tries to piece together what has happened to him, who is responsible and why they did it. Along the way he meets a girl, Mi-do (Hye-jeong Kang) who seems to be connected to his situation in some way, and indulges in maniacal and homicidal behaviour including one breathtaking, single shot scene where he goes to town on some henchmen with a claw hammer and another scene for the not so squeamish in which he eats a live octopus. No, seriously.

To go into much more detail would be to spoil some of the twists and turns of the plot and possibly hint at the revelations to come.

This film touches upon themes of revenge, family, dealing with past mistakes, love, extreme violence and dark humour. I was gripped from the first to the last frame and astonished at some of the directions the story goes in. It is a brilliant, brutal, searing and unforgettable piece of work though not for the faint of heart or squeamish.

Performances -

Min-sik Choi absolutely inhabits the character of Dae-su Oh, giving every ounce of himself to the role in a brilliant portrayal of a man who has been pushed beyond the boundaries of reason. As Dae-su Oh's nemesis, Ji-tae Yu brings an enigmatic cool and self satisfied smugness to Woo-jin Lee who seems to always be one step ahead of the game and as the love interest (of sorts) Mi-do, Hye-jeong Kang is wonderfully doe eyed and innocent, despite our suspicions that there may be more to her than we initially suspect.

In Summary -

The pros - a gripping narrative with enough twists and turns to keep even the most jaded movie goer guessing, excellent direction and cinematography and a host of superb performances.

The cons - on reflection the application of logic to a number of the plot developments begins to poke holes through the whole thing, some of it is entirely unfeasible, however it's a small niggle and the whole thing is just so damn gripping it's more than easy to shrug them off and enjoy the ride.

Rating - 4.5/5

Tron: Legacy (2010) film review

Ok, so, this blog was initially going to cover just the work I do in filmmaking, writing and music. Obviously I've been incredibly lazy of late and haven't blogged in a while. A friend (the lovely Aoife Hanna) recently suggested that I start a blog for film reviews since I post a lot of small reviews on facebook already. I was gonna go ahead and start a new one then thought, why not just add film reviews to my current blog? It's not like it wouldn't be relevant and it also ties in rather nicely with this blog's title, so, without further ado allow me to introduce the first "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man" film review!

Film: Tron: Legacy 3D (2010, Walt Disney Pictures)

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Writer(s): Edward Kitsis, Adam Horowitz

Cinematography: Claudio Miranda

Editor: James Haygood

Score: Daft Punk

Producer: Sean Bailey

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde

Tron: Legacy trailer

This long awaited (for some) sequel to the 1982 cult classic, Tron, follows Sam Flynn, son of legendary computer programmer Kevin Flynn who disappeared 20 years prior and who was on the cusp of announcing a breakthrough in computing which would "change everything".

In the original film, Kevin was digitised by a laser and sucked into his computer where he had numerous adventures with the human-like programs therein and fought the tyranny of the Master Control Program; another in a long line of malignant A.I. which can be found in the movies. Considered a flop at the time and a cult oddity since then, Tron was remarkable only for it's groundbreaking use of computer generated images to help create the world of the computer grid and the (at the time) amazing action sequences, so a sequel was a surprising development to say the least.

In the new film, Sam responds to a mysterious page from his Dad's old arcade and ends up sucked into the world of the computer Grid where he battles Clu; an eerie younger version of his father who now holds dominion over the Grid, and discovers just exactly where his father has been all this time.

So, was it worth it? After 3 years of expensive hype from the Disney marketing machine a lot of people seemed to be expecting a lot of things from this film. As a self confessed fan of the original, warts and all, I was one of those people.

Ok, let's start off with the good stuff. The production team must be commended because on a purely visual level the film is superb. The production design, CGI and rendering of the world of the Grid are all top notch. The pulsating soundtrack from Daft Punk is a perfect match to the visuals and they complement each other nicely. The cinematography and camera work are solid and it was nice to see the use of steady medium shots during the action scenes; after years of "shaky cam" action scenes there is a nice fluidity to the action and you can actually see what's going on.

Unfortunately after the opening third of the film in which our hero is involved in disc fights and an exhilarating light cycle chase the film begins to falter. Despite a genuinely moving reunion between father and son the second act is filled with reams of exposition and some fluffy philosophising which becomes rather tedious after a time. It's always a joy to see Jeff Bridges work but the scenes which take place in his domicile in the wastelands outside the Grid completely take any momentum out of the film. Weaknesses in the plot and script also begin to show as things start to make less and less sense. By the time the film throws in some more action, Michael Sheen hamming it up (no bad thing) and an ending that on reflection makes very little sense I was completely taken out of what was happening on screen.

Performances -

Garrett Hedlund is merely adequate as Sam Flynn, Bridges is solid but perhaps leans too heavily on previous work (The Big Lebowski most notably), Olivia Wilde adds a wide eyed, otherworldly naiveté to her character and Michael Sheen is wonderful as always.

In Summary -

The pros - astounding visuals, action scenes and production design, superb soundtrack, some entertaining performances.

The cons - some shoddy 3D, a saggy second act, too much exposition, a vanilla lead performance, a nonsensical ending.

Don't get me wrong; this wasn't a bad film, just another mediocre modern blockbuster with visuals and action to thrill but with serious deficiencies in plot and script. This a shame because the source material has potential for a lot more.

Rating - 3/5

A side note on the 3D used in the film - I've been on the fence for a while now about 3D; when it's done right it can be wonderfully immersive and enhance the film (see: Avatar, Up) but when it doesn't work it really doesn't work. In Tron: Legacy the 3D at times threw up problems with fuzzy images and strobing which was distracting and made it hard to fully ingest what was happening on screen. On reflection I would have much preferred to see it in 2D.