History Main / Oldboy

* FanDiservice: [[spoiler: The first time audiences see the sex scene between Dae-Su and Mido, it's probably tantilizing. Once they're hit with the revelation of Mido being his daughter, the scene is much less appealing in retrospect or upon repeated viewings.]]

* [[spoiler:TheBadGuyWins: Woo-jin gets his revenge, though he shoots himself in the head almost immediately afterwards.]]

* [[spoiler:ParentalIncest: Mi-Do is revealed to be Oh Dae-su's lost daughter.]]

* [[spoiler:SurpriseIncest]]

* AndIMustScream: [[spoiler:Woo-jin locks Oh Dae-su in his penthouse with the sound of Dae-su and Mi-do having sex playing over a speakerphone on an endless loop.]]

* NearRapeExperience

A South Korean movie very loosely based on a Japanese manga and the second installment of [[ParkChanWook Park Chan-wook's]] Vengeance Trilogy. The film has several parallels to ''TheCountOfMonteCristo'', as well as {{Shout Out}}s to ''TitusAndronicus''.

Oh Dae-su is an alcoholic businessman who gets kidnapped one night with no explanation. Locked inside a hotel room, completely cut off from the outside world except for a TV, and drugged with knock-out gas everyday, he finds ways to pass the time, [[TookALevelInBadass train his fists]], and plan his eventual escape.

But fifteen years later, just days before his long-awaited escape, he is just as mysteriously released, with nice clothes, money, a cell phone, and a million unanswered questions. With the help of a female Japanese chef named Mi-do and one of his old friends, he tries to piece together the scattered clues of who took his life away from him, kicking a lot of ass along the way. But is he prepared to learn the truth?

The Vengeance Trilogy also includes ''[[SympathyForMrVengeance Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance]]'' and ''SympathyForLadyVengeance'', but ''{{Oldboy}}'' is the most well-known. Also see ''Film/TheHost'', another critically acclaimed South Korean film that came out 3 years after the release of this film.

* AllThereIsToKnowAboutTheCryingGame: This movie is mostly known for its twist ending, where [[spoiler:the girl turns out to be his daughter]] and [[spoiler:the ambiguous ending; Park Chan-wook said he wanted it to be up to the viewer to decide whether Dae-su Oh had been successfully hypnotized or not]].
* AlwaysSaveTheGirl
* AndIMustScream: In a rare non-magical/sci-fi example, Dae-su Oh is kept trapped in a room for fifteen years with no escape and only a television to give him a link to the outside world. If he tries to kill himself, he is drugged with sleeping gas before he can succeed.
* TheBadGuyWins: Played with. [[spoiler:Woo-jin's plan is a complete success; but he realizes that he no longer has anything left to live for and [[DrivenToSuicide shoots himself in the head]] shortly after achieving his victory.]]

* BrotherSisterIncest: [[spoiler: Woo-Jin]] and his sister.

* ButForMeItWasTuesday: Exceedingly rare heroic example. [[spoiler: While in high school, Dae-su caught a glimpse of Woo-jin fooling around with his sister. He mentioned it to his friend, and it snowballed into a lot of vicious rumors that dismantled her psyche and caused a phantom pregnancy that led to her suicide. After all of this is revealed Dae-su tells Woo-jin that it was a nasty trick, drugging him to make him forget and then telling him to find out. Woo-jin calmly explains, "You weren't drugged. You just forgot. It wasn't important to you."]]
* TheChessmaster: [[spoiler: Lee Woo-jin plays Dae-su for a fool from beginning to end.]]

* DisproportionateRetribution: Woo-Jin, you ARE this trope.

* EnigmaticMinion: Mr. Han, Woo-Jin's silent bodyguard who gets one line in the whole movie and [[spoiler:almost kills Dae-Su before getting shot in the head by his employer.]]

* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Dae-su.
* GoryDiscretionShot: When Dae-su [[spoiler: cuts his tongue off with scissors.]]
** Also occurs when Dae-su employs {{JackBauerInterrogationTechnique}} on Mr. Park. You could see the bloody molars on the keyboard.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: When Woo-jin's sister is first introduced in flashback, she is reading a [[spoiler:SylviaPlath]] book.
* IAmNotShazam: Some people think "Oldboy" is the name of the protagonist.

* LoveAtFirstSight: [[spoiler: Deconstructed]].
* MindScrew: The whole film.

** And, in fact, the octopus nearly won. It managed to get its sucker on the inside of his throat and he started choking during the filming.
* TheOner
* [[spoiler:ParentalIncest: The whole point of the movie.]]

* PunchAWall

* SnowMeansLove: The ending. Subverted rather disturbingly
* SoundtrackDissonance Classical music plays while Oh Dae-su pulls out the prison owner's teeth with a hammer.
** The fact that Vivaldi's "Winter" actually ''works'' in this context confirms its status as CrowningMusicOfAwesome.

** Depending on how you first viewed ''that'' scene (not the flashback one if you're confused), without knowing or suspecting the twist, it can be a FunnyAneurysmMoment or HarsherInHindsight upon future viewings.
* TokenRomance: Subverted - Dae-su's relationship with Mido initially seems to be only a subplot, before turning out to be [[spoiler: the entire point of Woo-jin's plan]].
* TookALevelInBadass: Oh Dae-Su goes from drunken slob to ass kicking {{Determinator}} driven by revenge after 15 years of self training that mostly involved [[PunchAWall punching the walls]] of his hotel room prison.
** Oh Dae-su found that he hadn't, as he thought, Taken A Level in Rapist.
* TheToothHurts: The protagonist tortures one of his tormentors by performing dental surgery with a claw hammer.
* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler:Mido, so very much. Also Oh Dae-Su.]]

* XanatosRoulette: Dae-su was [[spoiler:hypnotized and given subconscious suggestions for 15 years.]]

* OrIsIt: The ending is left open to interpretation as to [[spoiler:whether Dae-Su is "fixed" or not]]

* ButForMeItWasTuesday: Exceedingly rare heroic example. [[spoiler: While in high school, Dae-su caught a glimpse of Woo-jin fooling around with his sister. He mentioned it to his friend, and it snowballed into a lot of vicious rumors that dismantled her psyche and caused a [[OrIsIt phantom]] pregnancy that led to her suicide. After all of this is revealed Dae-su tells Woo-jin that it was a nasty trick, drugging him to make him forget and then telling him to find out. Woo-jin calmly explains, "You weren't drugged. You just forgot. It wasn't important to you."]]

* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler:Mido, so very much.Also Oh Dae-Su.]]

* UnwittingPawn: Mido, so very much.Also Oh Dae-Su

* SurpriseIncest

* TheOner

An English-language remake has been in development for some time, and SpikeLee has been chosen to direct.

* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler: Right before Woo-jin commits suicide we have a {{tearjerker}} flashback of when his sister committed suicide. QuentinTarantino was at the screening and was shocked to find himself crying for a character who had been completely despicable for the prior duration of the movie.}}

* IncestIsRelative which is why...
** ...depending on how you first viewed ''that'' scene (not the flashback one if you're confused), without knowing or suspecting the twist, it can be a FunnyAneurysmMoment or HarsherInHindsight upon future viewings.

The Vengeance Trilogy also includes ''[[SympathyForMrVengeance Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance]]'' and ''SympathyForLadyVengeance'', but ''{{Oldboy}}'' is the most well-known. Also see ''Film/TheHost'', another critically acclaimed South Korean film that came out at about the same time.

[[caption-width:400:[[PreAssKickingOneLiner It's hammerin' time.]]]]

* UnwittingPawn: Mido, so very much.

* AdaptationInducedPlothole: The manga explains that Oh Dae-su was kept in a (probably illegally-run) facility where people who "disappeared" stayed, some of them actually by choice if they needed to evade loan sharks. The film has Oh Dae-su kept in a hotel instead, which led to some FridgeLogic.
** Given the locks on the doors, the food slots, and the security monitors/incapacitating gas in the ventilation system, I'd assume it's still a "facility". One dressed up to look like a hotel on the outside, maybe.
** The place is actually hidden on a structurally non-existent floor. Definitely not a hotel.

* FridgeBrilliance: After Oh Dae-Su gets out of prison, he is unable to cry; whenever he suffers from grief, pain, horror or despair, he just ''grins''. He was imprisoned for fifteen years in a room with a painting on which was written the first line of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's "Solitude": "Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone." Clearly he took the line to heart, and taught himself to laugh whenever he felt like crying.
** The segment where he confronts the teenage boys after his release gains additional significance if you know that the Korean language underwent a large shift in the time period during which he is indicated to have been imprisoned. The reason he has such a hard time getting them to understand him is because he's essentially speaking an archaic dialect.
*** Didn't he spend a great many hours watching the television though?
*** But as he points out in his InternalMonologue, television doesn't teach you words like "dickshit": the kind of language used in television, newspapers etc., always lags behind the spoken vernacular.
* FridgeLogic: How does [[spoiler: Woo-Jin]] have the resources to keep a man imprisoned and alive in a hotel room for 15 years, kill his wife and frame him for it, and [[spoiler: adopt his daughter]]?
** By having the best superpower of all: [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney being extremely rich]]. [[spoiler: Woo-Jin's]] wealth is emphasized several times in the film (not merely coming from an extremely well to do family, but growing that wealth through judicious application of the ever so useful [[ChessMaster ChessMaster]] abilities.
** Surely Oh Dae-Su could've successfully committed suicide while imprisioned by quickly inflicting sufficient irreversible damage to critical areas? (say, stabbing himself several times in the neck and heart)
*** [[spoiler: [[WildMassGuessing Perhaps an aversion to suicidal thoughts was one of the various hypnotic suggestions planted in Oh Dae-su's mind during his captivity?]] ]]

* XanatosRoulette
** Justified since Dae-su was [[spoiler:hypnotized and given subconscious suggestions for 15 years.]]
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*** But as he points out in his InternalMonologue, television doesn't teach you words like "dickshit": the kind of language used in television, newspapers etc. always lags behind the spoken vernacular.