I do agree that labeling any of these films as \”bad\” is a big mistake– a film like, say, I\’m A Cyborg, But That\’s Okay is \”interesting\” even if it doesn\’t live up to what Park is capable of (assuming you think he\’s actually a filmmaker and not a smirking faux-intellectual who read Oedipus that one time). Of course, I\’m operating under the impression that that statement is meant as an umbrella beneath which even the bizarrely maligned Park\’s oeuvre deserves a spot, but the Internet has a history of being disappointing in the blissfully unobserved hypocrisy of its writers. \”You can\’t call any of these films bad, except for that guy\’s\” sounds really disingenuous.

As to the actual film being reviewed, it really is great, and I definitely agree with the comments on the film\’s pacing. It\’s a film of respectable length but you never feel the time go by because it\’s so damn mercurial; Kim doesn\’t waste time in any sense, and he gets to the point with speed (but not with haste, which to me is a different thing entirely) and keeps pushing the film further and further while never introducing any real fat to plot or narrative. There\’s something to be said for how watchable and beautiful he makes his hideous and brutal and blunt displays of human ugliness, too, but I think the greatest joy comes in watching Min-sik Choi square of with Byung-hun Lee. Choi\’s a powerhouse, and has been since the late 90\’s (which is as far back as I can go in terms of my experience with his acting), and here he brings to the table a lot of the energy that made Dae-su such a memorable character while wielding that energy in a totally different way; Lee does his soulless, intense, focused man on a mission thing well without making him emotionless, as he did with A Bittersweet Life, and when the two of them clash it\’s electric. There\’s a lot worth recommending this film for– its photography, its use of score, its complex perspective on vengeance– but the two central performances might have been the highlight for me.

I don\’t think we\’re going to be in agreeance, though it seems the exact way you see \”Oldboy\” I see \”I Saw The Devil.\”

*SPOILERS*

The first 45 minutes are great. But the whole catch and release thing… what was his goal? How would this be a worse torture? Now I\’m not saying I wanted him to just tie him and torture him Hostel style. But the way this idea is used, like, in a perfect goal, what was his hope? How would this turn out? Didn\’t he a) know the tracking device would only be in for a very limited time and b) he\’s taking a chance that others will get hurt. Hell the first thing the serial killer does after getting out is kill 2 cabbies. Yeah, it ends up they were actually killers themselves (what a nice coincidence) but there\’s no way the main character could have known that.

I just didn\’t understand the point. It wanted to go Oldboy where somehow there are worse things than just death/torture, but it never did a good job of telling us that. What was his master plan? Some say, see, this shows how revenge only leads to bad things. But we never see a progression. It\’s at the end of the 1st act that he does this stupid catch and release thing. So yeah, by the end when he puts the serial killers family (who had only helped him) through the butchery of their admittedly evil son/father, it\’s like, okay, he\’s gone too far. But he\’s been going too far for most of the movie.

Again, it just doesn\’t make sense. In real life, you\’d never even remotely see this. It\’s a parody of itself. You never understand why the main character is putting so much at risk for something that never seems like a punishment for the serial killer (only time he gets \”punished\” is when he\’s tortured by the main character, which then is like, why even go through with this?) Just ruined the film for me, and if an American film came out with this exact same script people would laugh it out of theatres. But oh it\’s Korean so it\’s great.

I also think Bong is a very overrated filmmaker. The Host, again, great first 45 minutes, but then it slowly begins to make less and less sense. It\’s also got one of the weirdest death scenes I\’ve ever seen, at the end of the film, and again is full of plot holes.

Oldboy, however, along with JSA, Thirst and Mr. Vengeance, is a masterpiece. Sorry, Chan-wook Park is as good if not better than people say. Oldboy was probably the greatest film I\’ve seen this last decade. It\’s a powerhouse of a film, where everything makes sense at the end. The motivations, the \”why release him,\” all of it. It\’s not some shallow Greek tragedy-lite revenge film. Not even close. I almost find it hard to understand how anyone could like \”I Saw the Devil\” or \”The Host\” and then say Oldboy is overrated and shallow. Boggles the mind.

Some props to Mother, though, I did like that Bong film.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is probably the best film Park will make. Before it he was still getting a feel for entertaining, and after it he has become too pleased namechecking concepts and works of art beyond his comprehension. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance represents a fairly well-maintained balance of pulp and intelligence, and even then it doesn\’t quite reach the higher points of a Bong film. Granted I have not yet seen Thirst. I hear it\’s a bit better than the latter two films in Park\’s revenge trilogy, but I\’ve essentially given up on Park by now.

Kim has a fan following, I will admit, but I think by now most people have gotten tired of his loathesome sexual politics and repeat tricks. His past as a painter gives him the same one talent as Park: image-making. Beyond that, he\’s even more brainless than Park, who at least makes an effort to strain for higher ground during his exploitation nonsense. Few directors bother me in such a way as Kim does, and I attribute this mostly to his never-ending contention that a woman is not truly free until she accepts sex (usually prostitution) and violence (usually meaningless) as ways of living. Some fans would argue he\’s trying to make a point about people who think that way, but I\’m more inclined to think he\’s filming his specifically male fantasies of how he wishes women worked.

Bong, in contrast, treats all of his characters fairly (even the retarded ones) and is a remarkably accomplished storyteller. Park\’s sprawling narratives and Kim\’s meandering ones are mere shadows of Bong\’s efficient ones, and Bong manages to inject plenty of moral ambiguity and nuance into his genre exercises. Thus they work very well as both entertainment and art, a skill few directors have. Now if Kim Ji-Woon can pull off a similar balance of genre revisionism and moral exploration (and your review indicates that he certainly can), I feel he\’ll rank right up there with Bong as a favored contemporary director for me.

Will check this out if it comes out

Not sure if \”we all can agree\” that Kim Ki-Duk is awful, I think people generally seem to like a lot of his work. But again, with you on that one.

I\’m very split on Korean cinema. I find Park Chan-Wook to be a decent imagemaker, but a messy storyteller and morally suspect human being. Kim Ki-Duk is just awful, as I think we can all agree. But people like Bong Joon-Ho more than justify the typical genre-bending South Korean film tradition, and then there\’s others like Hong Sang-Soo and Lee Chang-Dong trying for something else entirely. It\’s a scattershot bounty, but I guess that\’s pretty fitting of the \’South Korean New Wave\’ anyhow.