Like the great revelation that Soylent Green is made out of people, "it's people!" there we are at the end of OLDBOY and we find out the hero has been having sex with his daughter. His daughter!

And strangely enough, it seemed OK.

OLDBOY is the story of a man who on a drunken night gets held at the police station for a while, picked up by his friend, and while his friend is making a phone call at the pay phone, the happy drunk disappears. Turns out he's abducted and stuffed in a room.

Our happy drunk man's name is Dae-Su, and he awakes in a decently furnished room with a bed, tv, and bathroom. There he is trapped for 15 years without knowing why or who is holding him. Dae-Su gets all his information from the television, even discovering he's a suspect in his wife's murder the night he went missing. Over the course of 15 years Dae-Su decides to keep a journal and write down all the bad things he's ever done in an effort to determine who has imprisoned him in this room, watch a lot of boxing and take up punching his wall, training for when he will get out.

Eventually Dae-Su is released and has no idea how he got there either. The first person he meets is about to kill himself by jumping off the roof. From this meeting Dae-Su sets out to find out who stuck him in the room, and get revenge. A revenge story, which sounds like it's going to be good, this was why I got this movie to begin with. As the movie goes on, it becomes less a revenge story and more a relationship story, which makes very little sense.

Dae-Su meets a female sushi chef and he orders a live octopus which he proceeds to stuff in his mouth and pretty much choke on and pass out. He wakes up later in her bed. She took him home. Why? that doesn't make any sense. She explains because he seemed nice. That's totally not true. She's this 19 year old girl, and he's a scrubby looking older guy who just about killed himself trying to eat an octopus. Dae-Su is so worked up after 15 years of isolation that he even tries to rape the girl while she's sitting on the toilet. So she smacks him around and tells him she's not ready, but when she is, she'll have sex with him. What's with that? Sorry rapist, but you'll have to wait. I'm OK with you trying to grab me off the toilet and have sex with me against my will. But don't worry, I'll give it up to you later.
The relationship makes no sense on so many levels.

Anyway, Dae-Su sets out to find out who imprisoned him, and he's got a hammer which he uses in ways that would make an oral surgeon proud, and very busy. Of course he eventually finds out who did it to him, and it turns out it was a childhood friend who Dae-Su started a rumor about. Turns out the rumor was about the boy having sex with his own sister. Turns out that was true, and the sister kills herself, because she got pregnant. But she didn't regret it, and she really loved her brother. So this was a 15+ year plan of revenge on Dae-Su.

OK. So I won't ruin any other surprises about the movie. But suffice to say he'll never please his daughter again with his tongue once he's found out she's the 19 year old Sushi chef.

At the end of the film you're left hoping Dae-Su and his daughter stay together as a couple, because she really does care about the guy, and obviously he cares for her. Despite his stupid treatment of her earlier in the film, and refusal to answer a lot of her questions. Which is one thing that adds onto the no way they'd be a couple feeling, but it works, If you can believe a relationship works where one partner treats the other like crap and the other overlooks it all because of love. (Or the script of a movie)

This film was originally done in Japanese, so it is dubbed into English, the voices are interesting in that they are so un-asian voices that it's amusing. Somewhat like the old Godzilla movies.

In summary, OLDBOY is a decent movie which could have used more violence to fill the time it takes Dae-Su to find out who imprisoned him.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age