{"id":48381,"date":"2025-07-29T00:01:48","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T04:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=48381"},"modified":"2025-06-28T02:47:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T06:47:03","slug":"oldboy-2003-comic-book-month-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/29\/oldboy-2003-comic-book-month-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Oldboy (2003) [Comic Book Month 2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A man imprisoned in a room for 15 years is suddenly released and tasked with finding the person responsible for his kidnapping, exacting bloody revenge on everyone he can find.<\/p>\n

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When it comes to twist endings, there’s a few films that always get mentioned. The Sixth Sense. The Prestige. The Usual Suspects. But one of the best, and perhaps most disturbing of any of them, is Oldboy. And not only is the ending fantastically unexpected and jaw dropping, the whole movie is pretty damn good, too. Hailing from Korea in a time when Korean cinema was having one hell of a moment, Oldboy is thrilling, unsettling, and despicably cruel to both the protagonist, and the viewer themselves. It punishes you for not paying attention and makes you feel like the world is a dark and awful place. And yet somehow it’s one of the best Korean films ever made.<\/p>\n

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Put directly into the exceptionally capable hands of Park Chan-wook, who wrote the script in conjunction with Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi, Oldboy is the best exhibition of his stylized lens to date. Adapted from the equally disturbing and vile graphic novel\/manga series by Tsuchiya, It’s a wonderful work off fiction that can sometimes get a little too close to home. From fight sequences and action to bloody torture and gritty violence, every aspect of the film is masterfully shot and tells the story with just enough ugliness to make it beautiful. In a weird and demented sort of way. While it can sometimes lean a little too hard on the theatrics, and occasionally feel a bit staged, even that seems to add to the charm of the film as a whole, and it’s a bold piece of filmmaking from beginning to end, and it’s not one for those who easily flinch or cover their eyes..<\/p>\n

Showcasing the uber talented Choi Min-sik in the lead role, he wears every terrible moment of his plight on his face, and his character arc is both endearing and utterly horrifying. Kang Hye-jeong is just as fantastic, too, giving the story a grounded feeling and adding someone to the mix who makes you genuinely care about them. The handsome villain is portrayed with finesse by Yoo Ji-tae, and while it’s sometimes unclear just what his motives are, there’s no denying that he’s the opposite of what you would ever expect to be the evil force of a film of this nature. Everyone is cast perfectly, and it still feels modern and fresh despite being over 20 years old.<\/p>\n

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The flight choreography is stellar, too, with every sequence of martial arts and weaponized brutality playing out realistically and full of gore, and the effects team also did fantastic work here. Cinematography is on point, too, with colorization that captures both the softer moments of emotional sequences and the gritty underground violence that makes the film stand out. By some miracle, it somehow manages to get like both a blockbuster and a snuff film at the same time.<\/p>\n

While it can sometimes feel like the story is too bleak and hopeless, and the twist might seem a little unbelievable upon too deep of an analysis, there’s no denying that Oldboy is a wonderfully raw and brutal film that has influenced many, and will continue to do so for decades to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man imprisoned in a room for 15 years is suddenly released and tasked with finding the person responsible for his kidnapping, exacting bloody revenge on everyone he can find.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[221,222,302,423,1087],"class_list":["post-48381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comic-book","tag-comic-book-movie","tag-drama","tag-graphic-novel","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48381"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48461,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48381\/revisions\/48461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}