Oldboy (2005) Critic Reviews

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 the full review

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 the full review

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 the full review

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 the full review

Regardless of how you look at Oldboy, it's unlike anything you are likely to have seen before.Read the full review

As always with Park Chanwook, you just hold on and let him rip.Read the full review

This nightmarish revenge drama from Korea is grueling, intense, cruel -- the very definition of extreme cinema.Read the full review

Obviously, this sort of taboo-flouting imagery isn't for everyone, but Park's vision is all of a piece.Read the full review

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 the full review