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Oldboy
Theatrical release poster
Hangul	올드보이
Revised Romanization	Oldeuboi
McCune–Reischauer	Oldŭboi
Directed by	Park Chan-wook
Screenplay by	Hwang Jo-yun Lim Jun-hyung Park Chan-wook
Based on	Old Boy by Garon Tsuchiya Nobuaki Minegishi
Produced by	Lim Seung-yong
Starring	Choi Min-sik Yoo Ji-tae Kang Hye-jung
Cinematography	Chung Chung-hoon
Edited by	Kim Sang-bum
Music by	Cho Young-wuk
Production companies	Egg Film CJ Entertainment
Distributed by	Show East
Release date	21 November 2003 (2003-11-21)
Running time	120 minutes
Country	South Korea
Language	Korean
Budget	$3 million
Box office	$15.4 million

Oldboy (Korean: 올드보이; RR: Oldeuboi; MR: Oldŭboi) is a 2003 South Korean neo-noir action thriller film directed and co-written by Park Chan-wook. A loose adaptation of the Japanese manga of the same name, the film follows the story of Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), who is imprisoned in a cell which resembles a hotel room for 15 years without knowing the identity of his captor nor his captor's motives. When he is finally released, Dae-su finds himself still trapped in a web of conspiracy and violence. His own quest for vengeance becomes tied in with romance when he falls in love with an attractive young sushi chef, Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung).

Oldboy attained critical acclaim and accolades worldwide, including winning the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where it garnered high praise from Quentin Tarantino, the president of the jury. In United States, film critic Roger Ebert stated that Oldboy is a "powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare". The film's action sequences, particularly the single shot corridor fight sequence, also received commendation for their impressive execution.

Oldboy has been included in numerous "best-of" lists by many publications. The film's success also led to two adaptations: an unauthorized Hindi remake in 2006 and an official American adaptation in 2013. As part of Park Chan-wook's The Vengeance Trilogy, it serves as the second installment, following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and preceding Lady Vengeance (2005). A 4K remaster of the film will be theatrically released in the United States on August 16 by Neon.

Plot

In 1988, businessman Oh Dae-su is arrested for public drunkenness, causing him to miss his daughter's fourth birthday. After his friend Joo-hwan picks him up from the police station, Dae-su calls his daughter to tell her he will be there for her birthday. While Joo-hwan talks to Dae-su's wife, Dae-su disappears with Joo-hwan looking for Dae-su and an unidentified person under a violet umbrella walking away. Three months pass and Dae-su learns he has been kidnapped and forced to stay in a sealed room, where food is delivered through a pet door and pleads daily in desperation with one of his captors to be released. As more time passes, Dae-su looks at a painting of a man that resembles Dae-su with a message stating "Laugh and the world will laugh with you; Weep and you weep alone." and is subjected to what he later learns to be Valium gas. As he is passed out from the gas, men enter and cut his hair and take a glass cup with his DNA on it along with a sample of his blood. As Dae-su watches the news, he learns that his wife has been murdered and he has been framed as the prime suspect using his DNA and blood. Traumatized by this news in addition to three years of imprisonment in isolation, Dae-su starts to hallucinate ants growing out of his skin covering his whole body and eventually attempts suicide by slashing his wrists with a piece of broken mirror glass. His imprisonment continues to affect him emotionally especially when he watches a channel of women dancing and masturbates but is cut short when the dance ends and attempts suicide again. He is kept alive so Dae-su passes the time writing prison journals about all the people he has wronged, learning to fight by watching boxing matches on television which has him training through shadowboxing, and attempting to dig an escape tunnel with an extra metal chopstick given to him by mistake from the restaurant that delivers his food. Dae-su is eventually able to dig a hole for him to feel rainwater from outside and realizes he will be able to get out in a month. He passes out after being subjected to Valium gas again, and a mysterious woman walks in performing hypnosis leading him to believe he is outside in a grassy field.

In 2003, 15 years after his imprisonment, Dae-su is released and wakes up from a large suitcase placed on a building rooftop outside and while feeling extreme side effects from prolonged isolation, he notices he is wearing an expensive suit. He meets a man on the rooftop attempting to commit suicide with his dog by falling. As Dae-su feels a rush of emotions touching another person in a long time, the man asks Dae-su "Even though I am no better than a beast, don't I have a right to live?". Dae-su repeats what the man says and the man gets emotionally overwhelmed and tries to fall but Dae-su grabs him and forces him to listen to what happened to Dae-su. When the man tries to tell his story and why he wants to commit suicide, Dae-su ignores him and walks away with his prison journals. He gets sexually excited when he also sees a woman while going down the elevator together and steals her sunglasses. As he walks outside, he hears the man from the rooftop with his dog landing on a car but forcefully smiles as he walks away remembering the message from the painting.

After testing his fighting skills on a group of thugs for taking their cigarette, a mysterious beggar gives him money and a mobile phone outside a sushi restaurant. Inside, he meets a young chef named Mi-do who he mentions he saw on television in a cooking show. He receives a call from a man asking Dae-su if he likes his clothes. Dae-su demands to know who he is but the man refuses to tell him and instead says he is a scholar who has been studying Dae-su and that who he is is not important but the reason for Dae-su's imprisonment. After eating a live octopus out of anger, Dae-su collapses after Mi-do touches his hand and is taken in by Mi-do.

Dae-su wakes up to see Mi-do crying after reading his prison journals and tells her he collapsed due to vitamin deficiency. Mi-do tells him she had to give him suppositories so Dae-su forcefully comes on to Mi-do. She fights him off and regretting what he has just done, Dae-su attempts to leave her apartment, but she tells him she understands why he did it but is not ready. She says she will sing a song one day as a sign for him to come on to her even if she resists and also mentions she hallucinates ants possibly due to her solitude like Dae-su since ants like to work in groups. Dae-su tries to find his daughter who is named Eva, but gives up his attempts to contact her after learning she was adopted in Stockholm, Sweden following his kidnapping. Now focused on identifying his captors, Dae-su and Mi-do visit various restaurants that serve dumplings which was the only food served during Dae-su's imprisonment to locate the one that prepared it with that exact taste. As Dae-su finds more restaurants, Mi-do chats online with a man seen through a web camera with the username, Evergreen, who nicknames Dae-su "The Counte of Monte Cristo", a fictional character who also sought revenge for his wife's death, which leads Dae-su to ask who the man is, but the man says he is a prince living in a high tower and disconnects. Dae-su asks Mi-do who he is, and she tells him she doesn't know and is just someone she chats with from time to time. Dae-su tells her he can't trust her anymore, taking a hammer and leaving. He finally locates the restaurant named "Blue Violet" and then follows a deliveryman all the way to the place where he was imprisoned.

Dae-su learns the hidden place is a private prison where people pay to have others incarcerated. He tortures the warden, Park Cheol-Woong by pulling his teeth with the hammer, one for each year of imprisonment, and interrogates him who divulges that he recorded his conversations with his clients through cassette tapes. Dae-su takes his tape and allows Mr. Park to be taken to a hospital by Park's guards. He fights the remaining guards on his way out and is stabbed but manages to defeat them all. While walking the streets bleeding and covered in blood, he questions whether he can go back to being the old Dae-su. A man helps him get into a taxi and reveals himself to be the person who imprisoned Dae-su by intentionally saying Dae-su's name. While recovering back at Mi-do's apartment, Dae-su listens to the tape and finds out he was imprisoned for "talking too much" and locates his friend Joo-Hwan, who is working at an internet cafe, and Joo-Hwan gets emotional after seeing Dae-su. Joo-Hwan listens to the tape but says he has no idea who it is thinking it could be any one of the husbands of the girls Dae-su was friends with.

They then try to locate the man through the instant messenger Mi-do used to chat with Evergreen. An instant message from Evergreen is sent to Mi-do stating the statute of limitations on Dae-su's framed murder of his wife has expired making Dae-su a free man. He also quotes "Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler". Dae-su goes to Mi-do and ties her to a bed thinking she is somehow involved with Evergreen. Joo-Hwan contacts Dae-su and reveals the man lives in the same apartment as Mi-do. As Dae-su enters his apartment, his captor is seen waiting for him with his bodyguard, Han, and gives Dae-su an ultimatum: If he can uncover who he is and the motive for his imprisonment within five days which is July 5, he will kill himself; otherwise, he will kill Mi-do and any other woman he loves. Dae-su, out of extreme anger, attempts to kill him but wants to know why he was imprisoned and prepares to torture the man by pulling his teeth with a hammer but the man says due to a weak heart, he has an implanted pacemaker and had the surgeon make a device that will allow him to turn it off anytime so he could kill himself, therefore never allowing Dae-su to know the reason for his imprisonment. The man leaves and encourages Dae-su to seek revenge to ease his pain but also warns him that the pain will always come back. Dae-su hears Mi-do screaming and runs into Park and his guards who want revenge. Park hands him a business card where he got his teeth replaced and as he is about to torture Dae-su as he did with him, the man calls Park and sends his bodyguard with money to convince Park to leave Dae-su alone. Dae-su insists that they fight since he wants to cut off Park's hand for touching Mi-do's breasts but is overpowered.

After Mi-do hears that Dae-su loves her, presumably during his conversation with the man, Dae-su and Mi-do go to a hotel and become sexually intimate. While both are sleeping, valium gas is spread throughout the room and the man and his bodyguard enter the room with gas masks. The man lies next to them as he caresses Mi-do's body. Dae-su and Mi-do wake up to find that a violet box was left for them with a severed hand, belonging to Park. Dae-su deduces that a bug is implanted on him since he told Park that he would cut off his hand for touching Mi-do's breasts. They go to a shop to find the bug and get it removed. Using Evergreen as a clue, Mi-do looks at places online that Dae-su might recognize and remembers that Evergreen is the name of the school he went to when he was a student. Dae-su and Mi-do go to the school and look through yearbooks and find an advertisement for a hair salon as well as the identity of Dae-su's captor named Lee Woo-jin who went to the United States to study abroad and became a wealthy businessman. While talking to Joo-Hwan, they also learn that he had a sister named Lee Soo-Ah whose picture was not taken since she drowned in a dam and was found by the cops in a bloated state the next day. When Dae-su asks him what kind of girl Soo-Ah was, Joo-Hwan says she had good grades and came from a wealthy family but was also a slut and there were rumors of her sleeping with many guys in her school. Woo-jin, who is eavesdropping, since the bug was removed, breaks a CD in half and stabs Joo-Hwan to death and angrily tells Dae-su that his sister was not a slut and Joo-Hwan's death is his fault.

Dae-su and Mi-do find the dentist with the business card Park gave Dae-su and tie up an employee in order to find Park through patient records. Dae-su contacts Park to offer money and return the ring from his severed hand thinking he was betrayed by Woo-jin. Dae-su leaves Mi-do behind with Park to ensure her safety despite Mi-do's protests and goes to the hair salon to get a hair treatment and obtain more information on Soo-Ah from its owner who knew her. While looking at the owner's legs, he remembers Soo-ah's legs that had a similar bone structure and as the hair salon doorbell rings, Dae-su also begins to recall his moments with Soo-ah with a bell-ringing bicycle that she rode on at school where he and Woo-jin attended and witnessed Woo-jin committing incest with Soo-ah. Dae-su told Joo-hwan what he had seen, causing rumors to spread. Mi-do is shocked to learn that Dae-su was imprisoned for telling Joo-hwan and starting a rumor over something insignificant but Dae-su realizes that that is Woo-jin's attitude. Since they now know the reason behind his imprisonment, Mi-do insists that Dae-su stop pursuing Woo-jin but Dae-su feels vengeance has become a part of his personality and must fulfill it. Dae-su remembers the message from Evergreen ("Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler") and finds it is a maxim from the Bible, specifically Proverbs 6:4 and goes to a building called Maxim. Also mentioning a prince living in a high tower, he deduces that Woo-jin must be at the 46th or 64th floor of the building but instead sees a floor for penthouse. Dae-su tries to reach the penthouse but the elevator is password protected and after multiple failed attempts, an alarm rings but Woo-jin shows up with Han and takes Dae-su up to the penthouse. As they are going up, Han gives him a gun and Dae-su tells Woo-jin that he knows Woo-jin slept with his sister. As they enter the penthouse, Woo-jin orders two of his guards to attack Dae-su but Dae-su kills them and is about to fight Han but insists that he talk it out instead.

Dae-su admits that he started the rumors of Woo-jin sleeping with his sister and feels Woo-jin unfairly made him find out the truth after hypnotizing him. Since Dae-su was able to find the reason for his imprisonment in time, he demands Woo-jin kill himself as agreed. Woo-jin says that the hypnosis did not make Dae-su forget; instead, Dae-su decided to forget about it since it was unimportant to him. The rumors continued to spread to the point that Soo-ah was pregnant, and she started to believe them resulting in a phantom pregnancy, and committed suicide, leading a grief-stricken Woo-jin to seek revenge. Dae-su sees a photo of Soo-ah taken dated July 5, the day she died, at the dam and asks Woo-jin who took the picture but refuses to answer after briefly getting upset. Woo-jin continues to reveal that he hired a hypnotist to have Dae-su and Mi-do meet at the restaurant and fall in love. Woo-jin then says Dae-su should not be trying to figure out why he was imprisoned but why he was released and then directs Dae-su to a violet box containing a family album with photos of Dae-su, his wife, and his infant daughter together fifteen years earlier. As Dae-su turns more pages, he sees pictures of his daughter as she is growing up to show Mi-do is Dae-su's daughter with Woo-jin wanting Dae-su to experience incest as he did with his sister. Dae-su grabs a scissor to kill Woo-jin but Han intervenes and overpowers Dae-su. Dae-su stabs him in the ear lobe and as Han starts to lose consciousness and his hearing, Han attempts to stab Dae-su in his neck with the scissor but Woo-jin demands that Han not kill Dae-su. Since Han is not able to hear him, Woo-jin is forced to kill Han by shooting him in the head.

Dae-su asks Woo-jin if Mi-do knows the truth and Woo-jin becomes upset that Dae-su couldn't figure out Park was deceiving Dae-su the whole time. He reveals he has been supporting Mi-do since she was four years old, and that Park is still working for him after Woo-jin bribed Park by purchasing another building for him in exchange for his hand and threatens to tell Mi-do the truth. Dae-su desperately apologizes to Woo-jin for spreading rumors that led to the death of his sister but also threatens to kill Woo-jin and make him disappear by eating him if he tells Mi-do the truth. Dae-su begs by saying he will be Woo-jin's dog and do whatever he says and humiliates himself by acting like a dog and licking Woo-jin's shoes. When Woo-jin is unimpressed, Dae-su, out of desperation, cuts out his tongue as an act of penance. Woo-jin finally accepts Dae-su's apology and instructs Park not to reveal the truth to Mi-do. Since Woo-jin now knows he has no reason to live, he points the gun at both their heads to die together but decides to give Dae-su the remote to his pacemaker and walks away. Dae-su activates the device in an attempt to kill Woo-jin, only to find it is the remote for a reel-to-reel tape recorder that plays an audio recording through large loudspeakers of Dae-su and Mi-do having sex. As Dae-su collapses in despair, Woo-jin enters the elevator and tells Dae-su that despite knowing the consequences, he and his sister loved each other and wonders if Dae-su can do the same. As he is going down, he recalls his sister's suicide where it is revealed that Woo-jin dropped her into the dam since she wanted to die, he uses his handgun to shoot himself in the head.

Sometime later, in a snowy forest, Dae-su locates the hypnotist and writes to her since he can no longer talk, requesting that she erase the knowledge of Mi-do being his daughter so they can remain happy together. The hypnotist sees no reason to help him but changes her mind when a certain line in his letter , something said by the man on the rooftop where Dae-su was first released, moves her. As the hypnosis is performed, Dae-su is told to imagine he is back in Woo-jin's penthouse and look at himself through the window which will reveal two sides of him, the old Dae-su and the monstrous Dae-su. The old Dae-su will walk away while the monstrous Dae-su will remain trapped in the window. Afterward, Mi-do finds Dae-su lying in the snow, but there is no sign of the hypnotist. Mi-do confesses her love for him, and the two embrace. Dae-su breaks into a broad smile, slowly replaced by a more ambiguous expression.

Cast

• Choi Min-sik as Oh Dae-su, a businessman who seeks revenge after being held in a mysterious prison for 15 years. Choi Min-sik lost and gained weight for his role depending on the filming schedule, trained for six weeks, and did most of his own stunt work.
  • Oh Tae-kyung as young Dae-su.
• Yoo Ji-tae as Lee Woo-jin, the man behind Oh Dae-su's imprisonment. Park Chan-wook's ideal choice for Woo-jin had been actor Han Suk-kyu, who previously played a rival to Choi Min-sik in Shiri and No. 3. Choi then suggested Yoo Ji-tae for the role, despite Park believing he was too young for the part.
  • Yoo Yeon-seok as young Woo-jin.
• Kang Hye-jung as Mi-do, Dae-su's love interest.
• Ji Dae-han as No Joo-hwan, Dae-su's friend and the owner of an internet café.
  • Woo Il-han as young Joo-hwan.
• Kim Byeong-ok as Mr. Han, Woo-jin's bodyguard.
• Yoon Jin-seo as Lee Soo-ah, Woo-jin's sister.
• Oh Dal-su as Mr. Park Cheol-woong, warden of the private prison.
• Oh Kwang-rok as Suicidal Man.

Production

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2018)

The corridor fight scene took seventeen takes in three days to perfect and was one continuous take; there was no editing of any sort except for the knife that was stabbed in Oh Dae-su's back, which was computer-generated imagery.

The script originally called for full male frontal nudity, but Yoo Ji-tae changed his mind after the scenes had been shot.

Other computer-generated imagery in the film includes the ant coming out of Dae-su's arm (according to the making-of feature on the DVD, the whole arm was CGI) and the ants crawling over him afterwards. The octopus being eaten alive was not computer-generated; four were used during the filming of this scene. Actor Choi Min-sik, a Buddhist, said a prayer for each one. The eating of squirming octopuses (called san-nakji (산낙지) in Korean) as a delicacy exists in East Asia, although it is usually killed and cut, not eaten whole and alive; the squirming is a result of posthumous nerve activity in the octopus' tentacles. When asked in DVD commentary if he felt sorry for Choi, director Park Chan-wook stated he felt more sorry for the octopus.

The final scene's snowy landscape was filmed in New Zealand. The ending is deliberately ambiguous, and the audience is left with several questions: specifically, how much time has passed, if Dae-su's meeting with the hypnotist really took place, whether he successfully lost the knowledge of Mi-do's identity, and whether he will continue his relationship with Mi-do. In an interview with Park (included with the European release of the film), he says that the ambiguous ending was deliberate and intended to generate discussion; it is completely up to each individual viewer to interpret what isn't shown.

Soundtrack

Nearly all the music cues that are composed by Shim Hyeon-jeong, Lee Ji-soo and Choi Seung-hyun are titled after films, many of them film noirs.

Track listing

Re-release

The film is set to be re-released in the United States for its 20th-anniversary on August 16 in a 4K version remastered by Neon.

Reception and analysis

Box office

In South Korea, the film was seen by 3,260,000 filmgoers and ranks fifth for the highest-grossing film of 2003.

Oldboy grossed a total of US$15,421,226 worldwide.

Critical response

Oldboy received critical acclaim, and is considered an influential cult classic. Praise was also given to the film's action sequences, specifically highlighting the "all-timer" single shot hallway fight sequence. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 81% based on 151 reviews with an average rating of 7.40/10. The site's consensus is "Violent and definitely not for the squeamish, Park Chan-Wook's visceral Oldboy is a strange, powerful tale of revenge." Metacritic gives the film an average score of 77 out of 100, based on 32 reviews.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars. Ebert remarked: "We are so accustomed to 'thrillers' that exist only as machines for creating diversion that it's a shock to find a movie in which the action, however violent, makes a statement and has a purpose." James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three out of four stars, saying that it "isn't for everyone, but it offers a breath of fresh air to anyone gasping on the fumes of too many traditional Hollywood thrillers."

Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com praised the film, calling it "anguished, beautiful, and desperately alive" and "a dazzling work of pop-culture artistry." Peter Bradshaw gave it 5/5 stars, commenting that this is the first time in which he could actually identify with a small live octopus. Bradshaw summarizes his review by referring to Oldboy as "cinema that holds an edge of cold steel to your throat." David Dylan Thomas points out that rather than simply trying to "gross us out", Oldboy is "much more interested in playing with the conventions of the revenge fantasy and taking us on a very entertaining ride to places that, conceptually, we might not want to go." Sean Axmaker of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave Oldboy a score of "B−", calling it "a bloody and brutal revenge film immersed in madness and directed with operatic intensity," but felt that the questions raised by the film are "lost in the battering assault of lovingly crafted brutality."

MovieGazette lists 10 features on its "It's Got" list for Oldboy and summarizes its review of Oldboy by saying, "Forget ‘The Punisher’ and ‘Man on Fire’ – this mesmerising revenger's tragicomedy shows just how far-reaching the tentacles of mad vengeance can be." MovieGazette also comments that it "needs to be seen to be believed." Jamie Russell of the BBC movie review calls it a "sadistic masterpiece that confirms Korea's current status as producer of some of the world's most exciting cinema." In 2019 on The Hankyoreh, Kim Hyeong-seok said that Oldboy was the 'zeitgeist of the vigorous Korean cinema in early 2000s', and a 'boiling point that led history of Korean cinema to new state'. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times gave a lukewarm review, saying that "there is not much to think about here, outside of the choreographed mayhem." J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader was also not impressed, saying that "there's a lot less here than meets the eye."

The film is regarded as one of the best films ever made and has been included in numerous "best-of" lists by many publications. In 2008, Oldboy was placed 64th on an Empire list of the top 500 movies of all time. The same year, voters on CNN named it one of the ten best Asian films ever made. It was ranked #18 in the same magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. In a 2016 BBC poll, critics voted the film the 30th greatest since 2000. In 2020, The Guardian ranked it number 3 among the classics of modern South Korean Cinema.

Oedipus the King inspiration

Park Chan-wook stated that he named the main character Oh Dae-su "to remind the viewer of Oedipus." In one of the film's iconic shots, Yoo Ji-tae, who played Woo-jin, strikes an extraordinary yoga pose. Park Chan-wook said he designed this pose to convey "the image of Apollo." It was Apollo's prophecy that revealed Oedipus' fate in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. The link to Oedipus Rex is only a minor element in most English-language criticism of the movie, while Koreans have made it a central theme. Sung Hee Kim wrote "Family seen through Greek tragedy and Korean movie – Oedipus the King and Old Boy." Kim Kyungae offers a different analysis, with Dae-su and Woo-jin both representing Oedipus. Besides the theme of unknown incest revealed, Oedipus gouges his eyes out to avoid seeing a world that despises the truth, while Oh Dae-su cuts off his tongue to avoid revealing the truth to his world.

More parallels with Greek tragedy include the fact that Lee Woo-jin looks relatively young as compared to Oh Dae-su when they are supposed to be contemporaries at school, which makes Lee Woo-jin look like an immortal Greek god whereas Oh Dae-su is merely an aged mortal. Indeed, throughout the movie Lee Woo-jin is portrayed as an obscenely rich young man who lives in a lofty tower and is omnipresent due to having planted listening devices on Oh Dae-Su and others, which again furthers the parallel between his character and the secrecy of Greek gods.

Mi-do, throughout the movie, comes across as a strong-willed, young and innocent girl, which is not too far from Sophocles' Antigone, Oedipus' daughter, who, though she does not commit incest with her father, remains faithful and loyal to him which reminds us of the bittersweet ending where Mi-do reunites with Oh Dae-Su and takes care of him in the wilderness (cf. Oedipus at Colonus, another Sophocles play about Oedipus). Another interesting character is the hypnotist, who, apart from being able to hypnotise people, also has the power to make people fall in love (e.g. Dae-Su and Mi-do), which is characteristic of the power of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, whose classic act is to make Paris and Helen fall in love before and during the Trojan War.

Remakes

Bollywood film controversy

Zinda, the Bollywood film directed by writer-director Sanjay Gupta, also bears a striking resemblance to Oldboy but is not an officially sanctioned remake. It was reported in 2005 that Zinda was under investigation for violation of copyright. A spokesman for Show East, the distributor of Oldboy, said, "If we find out there's indeed a strong similarity between the two, it looks like we'll have to talk with our lawyers." Show East, the producers of Oldboy, who had already sold the film's rights to DreamWorks in 2004, initially expressed legal concerns but no legal action was taken as the studio had shut down.

American film remake

Steven Spielberg originally intended to make a version of the movie starring Will Smith in 2008. He commissioned screenwriter Mark Protosevich to work on the adaptation. Spielberg pulled out of the project in 2009. An American remake directed by Spike Lee was released on 27 November 2013. 39 percent of critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were positive for the remake.

Home media

In the United Kingdom, the film was watched by 300,000 television viewers on Channel 4 in 2011. This made it the year's most-watched foreign-language film on a non-BBC television channel in the UK.

Awards and nominations

See also

• Revenge play
• List of cult films

Notes

1. Even though I'm no better than a beast, don't I have the right to live?

References

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External links

• Oldboy at IMDb
• Oldboy at the Korean Movie Database (in Korean)
• Oldboy at HanCinema
• Template:AllRovi movie
• Oldboy at Rotten Tomatoes
• Oldboy at Metacritic
• Oldboy at Box Office Mojo

• 2003 films
• Old Boy
• The Vengeance Trilogy
• 2000s Korean-language films
• 2003 action thriller films
• 2000s mystery films
• Films about kidnapping
• South Korean films about revenge
• Films about suicide
• Films directed by Park Chan-wook
• Films about hypnosis
• Films set in 1988
• Films set in 2003
• Films shot in Busan
• Films shot in New Zealand
• Films shot in Seoul
• Incest in film
• Live-action films based on manga
• South Korean neo-noir films
• South Korean nonlinear narrative films
• South Korean action thriller films
• South Korean mystery thriller films
• South Korean films remade in other languages
• South Korean crime thriller films
• Cannes Grand Prix winners
• South Korean independent films
• 2000s South Korean films
• CJ Entertainment films