Synopsis: Park Chan-Wook’s classic genre-defining revenge tale of a man who’s wrongly been imprisoned for 15 years and is then suddenly released. Given money and a cell phone, he’s challenged to discover who incarcerated him in the first place, but he only has five days to uncover the truth. Even with a mysterious young girl to help him, his tortures have just begun.
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Oldboy 8.0

I have to admit that I enjoyed this film less than the first time around. Of course, having so thoroughly appreciated ‘Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance’ last Monday, knowing that I liked it the least of the three films in this ‘Vengeance Trilogy’, maybe expectations were too high.

The story is good and so is the acting, but it’s a tad unbelievable. But, mostly, the sensual feast that the director had set for us in the first film is nowhere here. In fact, the picture looks grimy, cheaply made, and the aural presentation was nondescript. As well, his ingenius framing and set-ups of the first film are mostly absent here.

So it’s a very good film, still. But it’s not as artfully done as the last one (and the next one either, from what I remember). And yet, it’s garnered enough praise for a US remake to be on the way (sadly, the other two aren’t scheduled :/)