Oldboy

At the start of Oldboy, a drunk Oh Dae Su is chained at a police station, waiting for his friend to bail him out. While this friend is busy making telephone calls. Old Dae Su suddenly disappears on an empty street - just to wake up in what resembles a deteriorating hotel room with bathroom cubicles, a TV, a desk, and a bed. There's a small door with slots near the ground, where food trays are delivered to keep from dying of hunger.

Sometimes, a music tune plays - a cue for the room to be filled with smoke and knock him out again; when he wakes up, the room has already been cleaned, all of his attires have been altered, and he also got a new haircut.This inexplicable routine went on for a whopping 15 years before he suddenly got released. And here's where everything went down.

In all of its violence and sexuality, Oldboy is not an easy-to-make movie - even for Western countries. The puritanical minority standards - imposed and threatened on broadcasting - make many studios feel unwilling to make films that may encounter uncertain distribution.

Yet, the content does not constitute a bad or good movie - what matters is the message it wishes to convey. "Oldboy" is still regarded as a legend to this day - a powerful movie - not due to the mere story it depicts, but the human heart's depths that have been stripped bare.

Release: 2003

Genre: Thriller, Mystery

Stars: Choi Min Sik, Yoo Ji Tae, Kang Hye Jung

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%