Oldboy: Critic Reviews

It's an onslaught made to cause a sensation. Consider me simultaneously jolted and depressed.

Park Chanwook's frenzied thriller is entertaining to watch, which is a good thing, because there is not much to think about here, outside of the choreographed mayhem.

A dark and thrillingly horrible adventure into the realms of the unthinkable.

Its magnificence is that it takes itself dead serious. It's not entertainment, but it's sure a piece of toughness.

Tantalizes and tortures you as it lures you into its mysterious vortex.

For a while, though, this is as invigorating -- and as darkly funny -- as modern rogue moviemaking gets.

Oldboy may be a filmmaker's tour de force, but props should also be delivered to Choi, whose wretched, Herculean performance as the new millennium's Job could restore your faith in the selfless courage of acting.

Director Park Chanwook forces us to feel Oh Dae-su's pent-up rage and obsession with revenge, making us complicit when he acts out.

It is brutally epic.

Oldboy has the fatal air of wanting so desperately to be a cult movie that it forgets to present itself as a coherent one.

Oldboy is a powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare.

It's a movie of such jaw-dropping violence, wild improbability and dazzling style it overpowers all resistance.

There's a lot less here than meets the eye.

Exults in its own audaciousness, in its abandonment of convention and flaunting of unexpected intelligence.

Combining the sinister suspense of Alfred Hitchcock with the unrepentant violence of Quentin Tarantino, South Korean director Park Chan-wook delivers a revenge tale as shocking as it is thought-provoking.

As pointless as it is shocking.

Whether chomping down on a live octopus (in one of several scenes that require a strong stomach) or festering with half-crazed rage and impotence, Choi gives a bravura performance that powers the picture.

An adrenalin rush that will keep you buzzing for days.

It's mesmerizing and discomfiting, engaging the viewer on a visceral and an intellectual level.

While one might argue that it loses credibility and impact as it reaches further along the ledge of outrageous, tummy churning plot developments, there's no denying the turbulence it creates.

It's a grand, gritty, indelible experience.

Oldboy is a movie where you think you're in hell from the first frame -- but have no inkling of the infernal circles to come.

Oldboy is consistently compelling.

We're riveted throughout, almost pulled into the protagonist's mania -- who has perpetrated these horrors on him and why.

An explosively exciting psychosexual revenge drama from Korean powerhouse Park Chanwook that makes movies feel alive again.