Oldboy | A-

If foreign thrillers never usually appear on your Netflix queue, watching Oldboy might change that. Throughout the movie, you root for a scum bag whose emotional demise intimately unfolds, trying to resist closing your eyes during the stomach-churning, gory violence and the unethical romance that will baffle you.

Released in 2003, Oldboy is one of Director Chan-wook Park's three revenge films. An unknown nemesis kidnaps middle-aged businessman Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-sik, I Saw the Devil) and holds him hostage in a dinky hotel room for 15 years. A prisoner to his thoughts, Oh Dae-Su spends his confinement looking back on his life, trying to figure out which enemy he hurt the most, but he's caused so much damage not one stands out. After being released, Oh Dae-Su's anonymous rival gives him five days to find out who he is and why he locked him up. Solitude's effect on a man's psyche manifests itself on screen as Dae-Su's slowly evolved inner demon is finally unleashed to the real world.

Choi Min-sik's tones and delivery, complemented by a haunting classically scored music, contribute to Oldboy's authentic audible aesthetic. Mind-bending surreal effects, oddly juxtaposed against fast-paced action scenes, allow Oldboy to balance between a fine indie, blockbuster line.

It is highly recommended to rent Oldboy in its original Korean-language version, rather than attempting to find an English-dubbed version; many of the more crucial scenes are removed in the English version, thereby interrupting the plot's clarity. Also, avoiding phony voiceovers are definitely worth reading subtitles. Furthermore, in order to catch the many subtle-but-important details lost in the nonlinear plot and choppy match cuts, Oldboy requires a second watch, or even more, to find the hints to Dae-Su's mystery that are tangled in a distracting cinematography style.

It is interesting to note that Oldboy almost went mainstream when Steven Spielberg attempted to remake it, but luckily for fans of the original, those plans never fell through. Spielberg's version, the Hollywood-appropriate version of Oldboy, with Will Smith playing the lead role, intended to strip the very essential twisted controversy of the original Oldboy that caused so much guilty love for the film.

Park tastefully addresses provocative issues. Skillfully manipulating artistic merit, Park uses Oldboy to tackle dilemmas that directors rarely openly discuss on camera. In fact, he makes the audience blind to Oldboy's central predicament that is constructed right in front of them. Park's meticulously crafted detail, shown in seamless shots, keeps viewers from passing judgment on the film's morality off the bat.

Similar to Su's recurring uncertainty about his own life, Park leaves his fate in the audience's hands with an ending open to interpretation. Oldboy achieves a notable human quality while incorporating mystical elements, by shattering a man's existence, and not piecing him back together flawlessly.