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From a project, placed under unfavorable auspices, a genuine cult film is born. Old Boy, a tidal wave at the local box office, crushed productions like Kill Bill: Volume 1 (with which connections are developed) and Matrix Revolutions. Preceded by this excellent reputation, the wait was its climax. In the end, a true shock wave! Everything in the film participates in its success. Starting with a perfectly written and frightening effective script. A man is brutally kidnapped in the street by a stranger. The kidnapper assassinates the hero's wife and plants the clues that incriminate him. Then, he releases his prisoner to the the term of 15 years of false imprisonment with only one goal : to find the reason he locked him up. Here Park Chan-Wook makes the second part of a trilogy, started in 2002 with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, devoted to the topic of revenge. The original manga provides the talented director the film's shooting script. As for the adaptation choices, they prove to be more relevant. The virtuoso story advances like a galloping horse, until the final development: the discovery of an unbearable truth, one of those secrets that condemn you to madness or suicide. Old Boy abounds in visual innovations, supported by the remarkable photography of Park Hyun-Won, a key player of Korean cinema. The light, dark and majestic, as well as the music (a plethoric mixture of waltz, tango and techno) confer on the film "the esthetics of excess" sought by the director. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance was characterized, according to Park Chan-Wook, by a dry and cold atmosphere, whereas Old Boy is characterized by his hot and humid atmosphere. In Korean society, private revenge is prohibited. It thus remains the territory of the artists, for whom the representation is the place of the transgression. Respect for the elder, as in our Western societies, is also fundamental. Park Chan-Wook enjoys abusing these principles. Oh Dae-Soo (Choi Min-Sik, seen in Chihwaseon (Painted Fire) by Im Kwon Taek) is humiliated by a man younger than him, whose name is Evergreen. The sadistic refinement of Evergreen's revenge constitutes, besides, a very intellectual source of jubilation. This cinema of cruelty is accompanied by very deep existentialist thought. Once revenge is enjoyed, what remains to be achieved? Evergreen (Lee Woo-Jin, a heartrob) vows a true obsession for Oh Dae-Soo, whom he knows closely, to the point of forgetting his loneliness. Once the object of his ambiguous passion subordinate to his orders, subjugated, wiped out, he must face the vacuum of his existence. Checkmate. No one leaves winning in this destructive face to face. Not even the finale, a kind of happy ending where a beautiful hypnotist intervenes, master of the memory and destiny of the heroes, manages to tone down the feeling of fear that spreads in the audience. "Laugh and everyone will laugh. Cry and you will be all alone" the main character repeats, a beautiful proverb that brilliantly summarizes this remarkable film.
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