A young man with a wife, young daughter and office job, is kidnapped and imprisoned in a room with only a TV for company. Fifteen years later he’s finally released, but before he can start plotting his revenge, his mysterious kidnapper challenges him to uncover his identity and the reasons behind his imprisonment.

Oldboy is a bizarre and visually inventive Korean movie that won the Grand Jury prize at Cannes (France) in 2003. It's a revenge movie that mixes gruesome scenes with superb camera movements, a disorienting plot and painterly visuals. Director Chan-wook Park builds an amazing first half, carried by his inventive, sometimes dazzling visual style, creepy sound design, and Min-sik Choi’s powerful performance as our lead character Oh Dae-su.

The movie becomes more harrowing in the second act. The tormentor (played with chilling charm by Ji-tae Yu) reveals himself as a figure from our protagonist’s past who blames him for a tragic event. The imprisonment was only part of his revenge, and the tables turn as Oh Dae-su loses his grip on the situation.

Oldboy is not an inevitable landmark piece. It tends to overexert itself by concentrating on incidental moments, dragged out expositions, and insignificant sequences with over-usage of scene transitions. Park stuffs so many ideas into his movie that he distances the viewer from the onscreen proceedings. He seeks awe rather than empathy, which doesn’t always effectively support the encompassing dramatic context of personal revenge.

This movie has a lot going for it as well though. It’s visually marvelous with some really impressive cinematography. And despite my concerns, Park somehow manages to bring some level of humanity to his bizarre and twisted tale, making the climactic revelations more shocking than all the gruesome violence he offers. There are various convolutions taking the movie to its climax, but this doesn’t hurt the narrative too much because Min-sik Choi adds a gripping immediacy. It may not give profound insights into the human condition, but it’s a first-class existential exploitation movie.

My overall conclusion? Well, I’m still going to recommend this remarkable and entertaining movie pretty firmly, for its unconventional style, impressive acting performances, ditto cinematography and, since we’re all horror crazies, fair share of well executed grue. Just don't expect Oldboy to live up to its hype.