SFIAAFF: Oldboy
SFist spends more time than is seemly pondering where our beloved action film genre is headed next. We feel like the Matrix thing, beautiful as it is, is long over, and the wisecracking action dude is tired as heck. What's next?
We got a peek at a possible answer to that question at SFIAAFF's jam packed screening of 2004 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix Winner and bad-ass Korean gangster film Oldboy at the Kabuki last week. The line was long, but we didn't care because we had the best damn time at this movie.
Oldboy, the second in Park Chan-wook’s triolgy (the first film being Sympathy For Mr. Vengance and the third,entitled Sympathy For Lady Vengance, is currently in production and the reason neither the director nor the star of Oldboy could join us at the SFIAAFF), is a dark, intense, twisted story of punishment and revenge.
All photos by Tim Ehhalt
Heavily reminiscent of Memento, the film follows Oh Dae-su (the great Choi Min-sik) as he's abducted and held prisoner in a crappy hotel room for 15 years. Unexpectedly released, he basically kicks everyone's ass in Korea to figure out why this happened in the first place.
We hate it when reviewers describe a movie as having a "shocking twist", because every time something happens, we think "was that it? Am I shocked?". So, we'll just say that we were constantly surprised at what happened next. Highlights for us included a Oh's fihgt in a narrow hallway with about 20 guys and a knife in his back, Oh's first sushi dinner after his inprisonment), and Oh's novel interrogation methods (there's a hammer, and a mouth, and don't say we didn't warn you.
Since SFist likes our movies bloody, we left Oldboy with a smile on our face, but we warn you that Oldboy is not for everyone.
You can still get tickets for Oldboy's final SFIAAFF show in San Jose, or see it in New York this Friday by winning a ticket from Gothamist. We hope that the other screnings run more smoothly than the one we saw at the malfunction prone Kabuki 8.
In our screening, there was no air circulation or conditioning of any kind at all, and it was hot and steamy and miserable. In fact, our favorite part of the night (after the hallway fight in the movie) was when the Kabuki attempted to apologise to us for the unpleasant conditions by passing out to all of us coupons for a free soda, that had expired in September 2004.
We're not usually into "grades", but this time we have to say:
SFIAAFF "A+"
Oldboy "A"
Kabuki 8 "D"