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Saturday, January 4, 2014

Old Boy- Movie Review

So, the hubs and I saw a preview for this movie, and it's about a guy who's locked up for 15 years and in the preview he's watching TV, watching as life goes on and he has no idea why he's locked up, no one talks to him.  And then he's let out and wants to go find the people who put him in there.  Awesome!  Looked like a great B movie, so we put in on our Netflix queue.  The movie showed up in the mail and we put it in thinking how cool it was that it came so early!
We put the movie in, and it goes straight to the movie.  Never a good sign.  No previews, nothing.  And then we realized that it was Korean with subtitles.  Then we looked at the cover that the DVD came in.  Oh boy.  It turns out the new movie coming out is a remake of a 2003 Korean "thriller" of the same name, Oldboy, which is what we got in the mail.  (The newer one hasn't even been released on DVD yet, so I'm the idiot.) Well, we decided to give it a try and watch it anyway.  Let me tell you, this movie is strange.  I can't decide if I am encouraging you to watch it or not.  After the movie finished, I kind of wanted to magically scrub that time out of my life.  I felt a little dirty, and sad that I couldn't get those 2 and a half hours of my life back.  It was a well done movie, a well told story.  The lead actor was interesting- Oh Dae-su, played by Choi Min-sik.  In the beginning of the movie, poor old Oh Dae-su is wasted, and it is a pretty funny opening scene.  Unfortunately, it is his daughter's birthday, and right after he calls her to tell her Happy Birthday, and that he's coming home to give her her birthday gift, he is kidnapped and put into a cell.  He is released 15 years later with no information about why he was in captivity, except for the clothes on his body and the cell phone in his pocket.  He, of course, goes on a quest to find and kill the people who did this to him.  He happens upon a lady chef who begins to help him with his quest, since he is such an interesting character.  From there, the story gets wacky as you follow him on the journey.  I suppose I do recommend you watching it.  It certainly makes you think, if nothing else.
I will say, the movie was extraordinarily long for me.  I multi-tasked during boring parts of the movie, making dinner and futzing around on facebook.  So, you may want to watch it at home, where you can ignore the movie for a little while until it gets interesting again.


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