MovieMartyr.com

Korean director Chan-wook Park follows up his Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance with Old Boy, the second in a projected trilogy about revenge. A leap in ambition, at least visually, over Sympathy, the new film is slightly less satisfying overall. Though it’s often stylistic exciting, it aims for Shakespearean themes that its thinly sketched characters can’t quite justify. The film’s start finds lead character Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) imprisoned for unknown reasons in a gangster-run detention center, with a television his only link to the outside world (and a gross distortion of it at the same time). For the first thirty minutes of the movie, which cover the fifteen years of Dae-su’s imprisonment, Park achieves an uncannily claustrophobic atmosphere. As his protagonist’s mind is reshaped by prolonged exposure to television and frequent reprogramming sessions, the movie effectively transports the viewer into the mind of an obsessed madman.

With a constantly moving camera and a dingy look that recalls the work of David Fincher, Old Boy is, at least for its first half, a tour de force for its director. Frequently, surprising and rapid CGI effects disturb the balance in the camera setups and there’s a great little gag or two where what seems to be the film’s score is revealed to be a diagetic sound effect. Best of all, there’s an elaborately choreographed fight scene, involving an entire gang of thugs, shown in one long tracking shot. Behind all of its bravado, though it’s got a strange sensibility, often placing gross humor alongside scenes of extreme violence. Given its similarities to the Kill Bill films, it’s no wonder that it appealed to the Quentin Tarantino-headed Cannes jury. That being said, Old Boy comes up short in comparison. Tarantino’s movie had a day-glo ebullience to it, whereas Park’s has a sort of manga miserablism at work. The half-mad Dae-su looks beat down by the world, and as a result he’s rarely charismatic. He certainly doesn’t have the Bride’s glamour. Watching this, it becomes obvious how much Uma Turman brought to Kill Bill. Furthermore, even though Kill Bill yanked the audience’s chain as much as Old Boy does, the shifts in tone there were easier to weather because of the chapter structure Tarantino used. Park’s wide variations in style mostly serve to keep the audience on edge, though there are times where the movie’s energy seems to get the better of it. The emotional meaning of the scenes occasionally gets obscured by the flurry of motion. It’s an exciting ride, but it’s not at all a resonant one, and the only way to get into it is to work on its amped up terms. As a result, Old Boy is an exhausting viewing experience for what is essentially a popcorn movie. The style is so aggressive that it doesn’t forgive the complacent viewer. That stylistic variety is probably fortunate, though, because the plot it accompanies is a convoluted mess that requires your full attention.

Watching Old Boy’s plot unfold, one feels a mess of contradictory impulses, making it a unique experience, but not so much a pleasant one. Its priorities constantly change as it transforms from paranoid thriller, to bloodthirsty action flick, to romantic tearjerker, to high drama. What the plot initially presents as a quest for truth becomes distorted into a hunt for blood, leading into a ho-hum examination of the existential concerns (Life outside of prison is just a bigger prison, are we truly in control of our impulses, etc…) that swirl around the movie’s topic. These larger themes are a bit forced, given the delights the movie takes in showing off its style and the humor that’s liberally inserted throughout. Old Boy is a movie that comes on strong and peaks about an hour in. Afterwards, it’s less kinetic by far, usually doling out exposition instead of action. Unfortunately, as the movie begins to focus more on character, it never bothers to really develop its shallow villain, which unnecessarily cheapens its eventual plot twists. Such as it is, I think I’m better able to appreciate the impressive set pieces here out of context than as part of the bigger picture. Still, even if Old Boy only intermittently coheres into a whole, there are enough must-see moments here, that the film is sure to become a cult hit.

Jeremy Heilman

06-09-04