Old boy (2003)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2003
	Director: Chanwook Park
	Actors: Min-sik Choi, Hye-jeong Kang, Ji-tae Yu
	Country: ROK
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 03.12.2013, DVD
Synopsis: An average man is kidnapped and imprisoned in a shabby cell for 15 years without explanation. He then is released, equipped with money, a cellphone and expensive clothes. As he strives to explain his imprisonment and get his revenge, Oh Dae-Su soon finds out that his kidnapper has a greater plan for him and is set onto a path of pain and suffering in an attempt to uncover the motive of his mysterious tormentor.
Review: I did well to watch the original just after the remake. The story is really good and revolutionary. It questions "I am a monster, but I have the right to live". And actually we see really two crazy monsters in this movie. The philosophical questions are omnipresent, while they completely disappeared from the Spike Lee remake. The heroe is an average man and behaves all along as such, which makes it closer from the viewer. This way we can more easily take his place, while in the Lee version, the heroe is like a superheroe and therefore not interesting in this movie. The Korean movie has some great scenes for the originality ("I need to eat something alive", the hammer scene) and for the directing (hammer scene) but also several lacking of better technology or time and looking therefore very cheap. The ending of the movie is very Asian, explaining the rationale with an off voice, and very cruel and revolutionary for its content. No movie would depict (SPOILER) and destroy with no mercy the heroe this way! If no scene would look cheap as it does several times, this could have become a master piece.
Rating: 8 /10 Additional bonus point for the Korean movie, the posters are much more esthetic. See some other ones below.