In defence of Oldboy

There are two reasons why I am trying to come to its defence. One, I picked the movie (without knowing ANYTHING about it) to watch on Netflix and got heavily criticised by my wife and two, I liked the innovative story line.

This movie is definitely not on my list of best movies watched by any means and I dont intend to glorify or recommend it to even a third of my friends. The simple reason being that individual tastes vary, and I am pretty sure most of my friends might react in a way that my wife did. I am trying not to give away the story line, so you can continue to read without worries, if you have not seen the movie yet. In my mind, the director could have made a movie with a simpler story line, which would have had less taboo topics. In doing so, it is possible that the movie might have appealed to a much larger audience. Infact, I am pretty sure that some filmmaker in India is toying with the idea of making a movie on similar lines with a story line that gels well with "Indian sentiments". However, this particular director did not. He chose to stick with the story line, and chose to live with the comments. To his credit, he got a lot of positive attention which is good for him.

I am a strong advocate for creative stories. I like paying attention to the story line and viewing a movie as I would read a book. I like movies, and I consider myself pretty open minded when it comes to new ideas. Point being that this movie has a novel idea. I have heard that it has been compared to Memento and I think that it is pretty silly to do that. It stands alone and is as unique a movie as I have seen. The reason why it does not make it to my favorites is because I thought it could have been much better. It should have had better accompanying visuals and it should have had better team to dub it into English. Yes, pardon me for not understanding Korean and bring a prick about it, but the English version is the version I saw and understood. Production values are important for this reason.

Did you see and like this movie ? Let me know why!