Thriller · Mystery
South Korean (올드보이)
2003 · Directed by Park Chan-wook · 120 min
A man is abducted off the street and locked in a windowless room, with no explanation and no sign of when it will end. When he is suddenly freed, he sets out to learn who did it and why. Stylised, violent and operatic, it plays as a revenge thriller that keeps shifting shape.
Why it matters in cinema history
A defining film of 2000s Asian extreme and art-house genre cinema, it showed that a violent revenge thriller could win top honours at Cannes and travel worldwide.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a revenge story where the question of why matters as much as who, told with deliberate, heightened style.
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