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This film has been playing the festival circuit since last year and won the Grand Prix from the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. Based on a Korean manga, the story begins with Dae-su Oh (Min-sik Choi, PAINTED FIRE) at a police station after getting into a drunken fight, which makes him miss his 3-year-old’s birthday. Then suddenly, Dae-su Oh finds himself in a one-room prison with no reason for being there. His only company is a television set, where he learns that he has been accused of killing his wife. Through the TV, he also falls in love with a TV chef named Mido (Hye-jeong Kang, THE BUTTERFLY).

After 15 years of imprisonment, Dae-su Oh is days away from tunneling himself to freedom, when his captors let him go. He has a long list of more than 200 people he thinks could have done this to him and he sets out to find answers. The film serves as a revenge flick as well as a mystery.

The story deals with the “whys” of the situation rather than Dae-su Oh’s desire for blood. This is what sets the story apart greatly from a DEATH WISH-type of film. The film deals compellingly with issues of identity and sin. The interesting thing is that when it deals with sin, it’s not the grand sins, but the minor ones that we often forget.

Director Chan-wook Park (SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE) is emerging as a hot Asian filmmaker. OLD BOY has an original style. It’s violent, but in a realistic kind of way. When the film gets to the end, which is grandly dramatic and surprising, you sympathize greatly with Dae-su Oh, who is brought to life boldly by the raw emotions of Min-sik Choi’s performance. But we also get to understand the bad guy Woo-jin Lee (Ji-tae Yu, WONDERFUL DAYS). He’s a sick guy in every way possible, but we understand his emotions and motivations whether we agree with them or not. This film is solid action cinema that’s challenging and compelling. With productions like OLD BOY and BATTLE ROYALE, Asia is becoming the center of challenging and important action films.