The revenge film that revolutionized the international cinema scene returns to theaters for its anniversary
Of course, Park Chan-wook’s masterpieceOld Boy‘ was not the first Korean film to attract the attention of viewers outside Asia. That same year we had had the fabulous rural thriller ‘Memories of Murder’, by the country’s other star director, Bong Joon Ho. And Park Chan-wook himself had shown the first film of his revenge trilogy, ‘Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance’, at international festivals a year earlier. But ‘Old Boy’ connected in a special way with Western viewers by raising a feeling that has been captured in millions of films of all origins, revengebut with the doses of extravagance and visual daring that we have always expected in Korean cinema since then. ‘Old Boy’ became almost a canonical film of the country, at least for foreign viewers and festivals, since there the commercial cinema that the majority of the population consumes, just like in Europe or the United States, is nothing like it. to this experiment artie but forceful. The convoluted plot of ‘Old Boy’ begins when a Korean businessman is kidnapped and confined for years in a cell where there is only a television. He doesn’t know why he is there and little by little we will witness his slow descent into madness. When he comes out, he will begin a meticulous process of revenge for those who have destroyed his life, violent and with a good amount of extreme revelations. We all remember from ‘Old Boy’ its magnificent scene shot in sequence, of a hallway full of enemies that the protagonist dispatches quickly and with the help of a hammer. It has been imitated in series seemingly as far removed from this film as ‘Daredevil’, demonstrating the extent to which the reach and influence of ‘Old Boy’ make it a unique icon of Korean cinema. Now, on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, we can once again enjoy this film on the big screen, as it is re-released in theaters. In Xataka | Spectators and critics say it is the best science fiction film of recent times, but it was barely seen in theaters
