The revitalized mood in South Korean cinema since 2000 has served up a wide variety of incredible movies unlike anything seen in Asian cinema in quite some time, and if one director deserves to be crowned king of them all then it is Park Chan-wook. Chan-wook's Vengeance trilogy is a consistently excellent exercise in tight plotting and high tension with a raw and uncompromising attitude towards the human condition. Its central entry, Oldboy, represents the director at his most elegaic and graceful, with some truly stunning production design and camerawork which easily matches the best that Hollywood has to offer, while at the same time making the disturbing subject matter all the more mesmerising. Oldboy is the revenge thriller par excellence - just make sure you don't watch the terrible US remake by mistake.
