Oldboy sits in the centre of Park Chan-wook's much celebrated Vengeance trilogy and remains a masterclass in both visual excellence and intricate plotting over ten years since its release. Based loosely on the Japanese manga of the same name by Nobuaki Minegishi, few thrillers are as tense and enervating. One rainy evening, drunken businessman Oh Dae-su (the excellent Choi Min-sik) finds himself snatched off the city streets and incarcerated in a strange prison, where he is held without explanation or contact with the outside world for 15 years. His release is just the beginning of his ordeal, as he sets out to find out who was responsible with the help of a young restaurant chef Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung). Featuring an incredible single-take fight in a corridor which has justifiably gone down as one of the greatest fight scenes in movie history, Oldboy oozes style, with an intriguingly convoluted plot to match. With painful predictability, Hollywood recognised the potential for a US remake and drafted in Spike Lee to perform directorial responsibilities. The result couldn't have been much more of a mess. It seems as if Lee wasn't entirely to blame - the studio heavily cut the film and he removed his trademark "A Spike Lee Joint" from the credits.
