OldBoy

OldBoy is a film with an interesting premise: a man named Oh Dae-Su is kidnapped off the streets and placed into a hotel room...for fifteen years. He is not allowed to leave or meet his captors. The only contact with the outside world he has is through the television they have provided him. He learns that he is framed for the murder of his wife and that his daughter has been put up for adoption. He begins to plot his escape and eventual revenge against those who have imprisoned him. On the eve of his escape attempt, he is drugged and wakes up on a roof of another building. Three days later, his captor comes to Oh Dae-Su and tells him he has five days to figure out who he is and why he held him prisoner.



I have a habit of watching movies with stories like this one while I'm high and freaking out over how original and gripping the idea is. I wanted to pick a movie to showcase this phenomenon, but there were a lot of choices. Luckily, my friend had OldBoy and weed, so there you go.

I'll talk about my thoughts on the plot more in a second, but I want to talk about the other aspects first.

Visually, this film doesn't bring that much new to the table, but there are some scenes and shots that those who are stoned will definitely appreciate. The Hallway Fight scene will either give you chills or get what I call the "Oh shi-" reaction, wherein you'll be excited and entirely unsure how to describe what you're feeling, at least not coherently. Surprisingly this movie has a sex scene. Now, sex scenes during my greenscreens always bum me out but this one is especially weird, given that the translators give us lines like "It hurts, but I will endure!" I might find this funny usually, but this time, I just felt really uncomfortable. There are other examples that I think are more "trippy," but I can't tell you what they are for fear of spoiling the plot.

Sound wise, this movie is very eerie and tripped me out constantly. It doesn't help that I chose to watch this subbed rather than dubbed and that threw me off as well. The actors choose to speak in dark, quiet tones (which I think they chose to do as a parody of American action film characters) and it continues to pull me into the movie, even though I have to read the translations.


Watching this movie high provided me a chance to explore a whole new element to this film I hadn't considered before. The lines between victim and victimizer are blurred to a new extreme. While the villain's method of revenge could be considered extreme, we are left to contemplate the motivation behind his revenge and the kind of person Oh Dae-Su truly is. When they first meet, Oh Dae-Su does not recognize his captor, and as we learn later, the effect Oh Dae-Su has on the captor's life should have at least left a last memory. At one point, Oh Dae-Su begins writing a journal of everyone he has wronged, and the list is monstrous. So even though we are supposed to root for Oh Dae-Su as our hero, we are given an image of him as a dislikeable person who has only changed because of his imprisonment. Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?


But then again, I could be wrong.

Sorry, no High Points for you today. Nothing funny was said.