CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

83 Alexandra
80 Band's Visit, The
76 Beauty in Trouble
47 Bella
80 Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
59 Blind Mountain
55 Bra Boys
60 Brick Lane
70 Caramel
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
83 Chop Shop
83 Chris & Don. A Love Story
78 Counterfeiters, The
52 Diminished Capacity
64 Dreams with Sharp Teeth
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
84 Edge of Heaven, The
52 Elsa & Fred
79 Encounters at the End of the World
62 Expired
64 Fall, The
51 Finding Amanda
57 Flawless
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
63 Foot Fist Way, The
60 Fugitive Pieces
45 Full Grown Men
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
69 Go-Getter, The
74 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
63 Gunnin for that #1 Spot
68 Heartbeat Detector
34 Holding Trevor
68 Honeydripper
55 Irina Palm
69 Jellyfish
60 Jihad for Love, A
68 Kabluey
62 Kiss the Bride
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
82 Last Mistress, The
38 Life Before Her Eyes, The
70 Love Songs
64 Married Life
30 Meet Bill
33 Miss Conception
53 Mister Lonely
74 Mongol
52 Mother of Tears, The
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
84 My Winnipeg
61 On the Rumba River
69 Operation Filmmaker
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
72 Priceless
51 Promotion, The
55 Quid Pro Quo
29 Red Roses and Petrol
79 Reprise
71 Roman de gare
56 Sangre de mi sangre
51 Savage Grace
76 Shotgun Stories
66 Son of Rambow
70 Standard Operating Procedure
62 Stuck
72 Surfwise
81 Tell No One
56 Then She Found Me
xx Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
71 To the Limit
54 Tracey Fragments, The
70 Trumbo
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
56 Unknown Woman
86 Up the Yangtze
79 Visitor, The
62 Wackness, The
37 War, Inc.
64 Water Lilies
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
55 Without the King
72 Woman on the Beach
64 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Oldboy
Tartan USA

Oldboy reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 74 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.5 out of 10
based on 31 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 85 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for strong violence including scenes of torture, sexuality and pervasive language

Starring Min-sik Choi, Ji-tae Yu, Hye-jeong Kang, Dae-han Ji, Seung-Shin Lee, Dal-su Oh, and Byeong-ok Kim

Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is an ordinary Seoul businessman with a wife and little daughter who, after a drunken night on the town, is locked up in a strange, private "prison." No one will tell him why he's there or who his jailer is. The imprisonment last for 15 years until one day when Dae-su finds himself unexpectedly deposited on a grass-covered high-rise roof, determined to discover the mysterious enemy who had him locked up. (Tartan Films)


GENRE(S): Action  |  Foreign  |  Mystery  |  Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Chan-wook Park
Jo-yun Hwang
Chun-hyeong Lim
Garon Tsuchiya (story)
 
DIRECTED BY: Chan-wook Park  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: August 23, 2005 
Theatrical: March 25, 2005 
RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: South Korea 
LANGUAGE(S): Korean (with English subtitles) 

Grand Prize of the Jury, 2004 Cannes Film Festival; Best Foreign Film, 2004 British Independent Film Awards

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
It's a movie of such jaw-dropping violence, wild improbability and dazzling style it overpowers all resistance.
Read Full Review
100
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Oldboy is a powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare.
Read Full Review
100
New York Post V.A. Musetto
Park's direction is flawless and Jung Jung-hoon's cinematography is stunning.
Read Full Review
100
Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
Startling and amazing -- a cinematic hammer to the skull.
Read Full Review
90
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Anguished, beautiful and desperately alive, Oldboy is a dazzling work of pop-culture artistry.
Read Full Review
90
Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson
It's a work of art for sure, but a sadistic one. Oldboy is one of the year's best; it just isn't for everyone. If you're still interested, go for it.
Read Full Review
90
Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Whatever its oversteps and excesses (I do think Park ran a little amok with the computer gimcrackery), Oldboy has the bulldozing nerve and full-blooded passion of a classic.
Read Full Review
88
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
As always with Park Chanwook, you just hold on and let him rip.
Read Full Review
88
Premiere Glenn Kenny
Once the picture gets into Hollywood's bloodstream, it could well prove to be as influential as John Woo's 1989 crime thriller, "The Killer."
Read Full Review
88
New York Daily News Jami Bernard
This hunt for revenge is really a quest for self-discovery. The story, acting and brilliant directing elevate Oldboy into a human struggle to know yourself and your place in the universe, and to live with that sometimes terrible knowledge.
Read Full Review
80
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
His film is not for the weak of stomach or heart, but it's a stunner all the same.
80
Slate David Edelstein
Obviously, this sort of taboo-flouting imagery isn't for everyone, but Park's vision is all of a piece.
Read Full Review
80
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
This is absolutely not a film for all tastes, but it's a masterpiece of pitiless power whose audacious, ambiguous climax strikes a note of insane romanticism as haunting as it is perverse.
Read Full Review
80
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
The result is a powerfully visceral experience that justifies itself almost entirely on surface chops, with striking color composition and a complex sound design that elevates the story to an operatic scale.
Read Full Review
80
Variety Derek Elley
A wild, intensely cinematic ride into two men's burning desire to get even.
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Desson Thomson
You will surely leave this movie shocked, shaken and surprisingly moved. And definitely stuck on that poor octopus.
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Its magnificence is that it takes itself dead serious. It's not entertainment, but it's sure a piece of toughness.
Read Full Review
78
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
While the climax is admittedly something of a letdown after all the build-up, it's a hopelessly, helplessly original film, all guts, no glory.
Read Full Review
75
Boston Globe Ty Burr
More than anything else, Oldboy recalls Alfred Hitchcock with all restraint tossed to the wind, or Hitchcock's most obsessed devotee, Brian De Palma, at his most nastily inspired.
Read Full Review
75
San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego
This nightmarish revenge drama from Korea is grueling, intense, cruel -- the very definition of extreme cinema.
Read Full Review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
This is a movie about draining, tenderizing and chopping up the audience emotionally.
Read Full Review
75
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
As mysterious as it is sinister.
Read Full Review
75
ReelViews James Berardinelli
Regardless of how you look at Oldboy, it's unlike anything you are likely to have seen before.
Read Full Review
70
Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
It says something when you come out of a film as weird and fantastical as Oldboy and feel that you've experienced something truly authentic. I just don't know what. I can't think of anything to compare it to.
Read Full Review
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It's just the kind of film that you'd expect a jury led by Quentin Tarantino to choose, a bloody and brutal revenge film immersed in madness and directed with operatic intensity.
Read Full Review
60
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
Oldboy has the fatal air of wanting so desperately to be a cult movie that it forgets to present itself as a coherent one.
Read Full Review
50
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Oldboy caused a love-it-or-hate-it stir at Cannes last year, and how could it not: It's an onslaught made to cause a sensation. Consider me simultaneously jolted and depressed.
Read Full Review
50
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Entertaining to watch - notwithstanding the scene in which Dae-su eats a live animal - which is a good thing, because there is not much to think about here, outside of the choreographed mayhem.
Read Full Review
50
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Despite its director's skill at staging trash with dash, Oldboy is too long and portentous to be an enjoyable B movie. The movie's self-seriousness short-circuits its sensationalism.
Read Full Review
40
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
There's a lot less here than meets the eye.
Read Full Review
10
LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Put simply, in my humble opinion, Oldboy sucks.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 85 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

philip gave it a10:
It was the best movie in my life.never fet so emotionally shocked.a true love story.

Matt R. gave it a0:
My question is, what is the point of this movie? Besides leaving you with the feeling of being raped. This movie sucked. If you enjoyed this, you probably secretly desire incest with your children. Or you just lack complete empathy or moral center as a human being.

James L. gave it a10:
This has to be one of the best made films of all time. This movie is far better than Lady Vengeance; with all due respect, I don't know what Jackie is saying. Of course Oldboy is dark, sick and disturbing, but that's also what makes the film so original . The director does a good job to get people to think about what the outcome will be without losing momentum .

Jackie gave it a0:
Absolutely fucking horrific. Good people are tortured in unbelievably vile ways for having done nothing at all; everyone in the film is pointlessly disturbed and it leaves one with absolutely no satisfaction at the end. I didn't feel that justice had been done, which is the point for me of films like this, I just felt like I'd seen some cool fighting and needless suffering. Watch this if you want to destroy your faith in humanity, watch the far superior Lady Vengeance to have it restored.

Lisa B. gave it an8:
I just saw it, and will definitely go back for the other two in the trilogy. Although I'm not giving it a 10, and can understand some of the criticism here, but that anyone could use the attribute "hollow" to describe this movie is beyond belief. Greek tragedy at the core, and really a remarkable meditation on the idea of vengeance. With little dialogue, captures complex relationships and emotions.

Czeslaw K. gave it a7:
Although at times visually mesmerising I found it hard to not leave the cinema. Painful viewing left me feeling empty. Not for the weak minded, its stretched my mind. I am left asking myself wether or not that defines a good movie, one that makes you feel bad or uncomfortable.

Rick Y. gave it a10:
I can't remember much of anything after seeing this film except feeling completely emotionally spent. I was too busy picking up the pieces of my shattered jaw off the floor.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: World News | Fantasy Football | Amy Winehouse | Baseball | E3 | Batman | Firefox 3 | iPhone 3G

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CNET Networks, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use