Oldboy
Oldboy starts magnificently, setting things up with a great concept. A useless drunk is taken off the streets and locked away for fifteen years in what looks like a cheap and nasty hotel room. Food gets delivered to him, but he never sees his captors, and never gets an explanation as to why he is there. Armed only with a television, he watches the years go by, and the world change, as he transforms himself into a fighting machine by boxing against the walls, readying himself in case he ever gets the chance to escape.
One day gas infiltrates the room and knocks him out. He wakes up in a suitcase, on top of a building, outside. He discovers quickly that his training has paid off, and he is now quite capable of kicking some major ass, which will prove handy as his hunt for answers and revenge begins.
The mystery slowly unravels nicely as he finds the place he was kept captive and discovers that it's actually a business that caters to others of a similarly twisted nature – you pay, we hold. The fight scene that ensues is a single take dolly shot side on to a hallway where a whole shitload of bad guys are attacking Oldboy. Or rather, Oldboy is attacking a whole shitload of bad guys.
This is all great stuff.
It's when the film starts trying to explain things that the inevitable letdown comes. Things gets seriously weird. A hypnotist? A hell of a lot of incest? Are all Korean films like this? It started off so simple: a man trying to find out why 15 years of his life was taken away. A man after revenge wherever he could find it…
Don't get me wrong, even at its strangest this film is a pleasure to watch and just goes to prove that you have to look outside Hollywood to find interesting action films. I will definitely be tracking down this guy's other stuff.