Why ‘Oldboy’ Is So Good

Last updated on 2026-01-24

No, not the remake, obviously.

A lot of films vanish from my brain the moment I stand up from the couch or leave the theater, but Oldboy did the opposite, as it’s moved in, and rearranged the furniture in my head.

I first watched it a good while ago when I was going through my phase of watching only foreign films, and yet I still catch myself thinking about certain scenes at random, as it kept coming back, asking questions I didn’t want to answer, and that’s the mark of something that actually works.

And yes, this will involve spoilers, as you cannot talk about why Oldboy is so good without ruining it, because the entire point of the movie is what it does to you once you know.

I repeat again, spoilers ahead.

The Setup That Lulls You In

Oldboy opens with Oh Dae-su, our main character, acting like a complete disaster of a human being, where he’s drunk, loud, embarrassing himself at a police station, and generally being the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to sit next to on a bus.

He has a wife, he has a young daughter, and he also clearly doesn’t take much of anything seriously, including himself.

Then, without warning, he’s kidnapped, and he just wakes up locked in a small room and stays there for fifteen years.

Fifteen years is an insane amount of time, and the movie doesn’t romanticize it – he eats the same food every day, he watches TV, he loses his mind slowly, he punches walls, he talks to himself – and the film makes you feel the stretch of that time without making it boring.

Through a television in his room, he learns that his wife has been murdered and that he’s been blamed for it, and his daughter is adopted by another family – his entire life is erased while he sits in a box.

Then, just as suddenly as it started, he’s released.

At this point, Oldboy looks like a pretty straightforward revenge story, where a wronged man hunts down mysterious enemy, and where you think you know the rules.

You do not.

Yes, Oldboy has violence that people love to talk about, and the hallway fight scene is legendary for a reason, but the violence isn’t what makes Oldboy stick, because if it were just about fights and shock moments, it would’ve faded from memory like dozens of other “extreme” movies.

The violence here feels like an extension of the characters’ emotional states, where it’s ugly because the people committing it are broken, not because the movie wants to show off.

And that’s an important distinction.

The Romance That Shouldn’t Work But Does

After his release, Oh Dae-su meets Mi-do, a young woman who works as a sushi chef, and their relationship develops quickly.

On paper it really shouldn’t work though, as he’s traumatized, unstable, and obsessed with revenge, and she’s kind, wounded in her own way, and drawn to him for reasons that feel emotional rather than logical.

But, it works, in a human way, where their connection feels strange, and there’s something uncomfortable about it, but also something sincere, and I very much remember watching their scenes together and thinking, I shouldn’t be rooting for this, but I kind of am,

And that feeling is important, as the film wants you there, it wants you invested, and it wants you emotionally involved before it pulls the floor out from under you, because Oldboy isn’t just telling a story, it’s setting a trap.

The Twist That Changes Everything, Including You

So, when Oh Dae-su finally confronts Lee Woo-jin, the man responsible for his imprisonment, the film takes a turn that still feels like a punch to the gut no matter how many times I think about it, as the revenge story flips inside out, where Lee reveals that years earlier, Oh Dae-su spread a rumor about Lee and his sister having an incestuous relationship, and the rumor destroyed her life.

She became pregnant, and eventually killed herself., so Lee planned a revenge that wasn’t about killing Oh Dae-su, it was about making him live with something worse.

Mi-do is Oh Dae-su’s daughter.

Let that sit for a second – Their meeting wasn’t an accident, and their love wasn’t random.

Both of them were hypnotized and manipulated over years to fall into this exact situation, and Lee didn’t just punish Oh Dae-su, he turned him into a participant in the same kind of taboo that ruined Lee’s life.

This is the moment where a lot of people check out emotionally, and I get it., it’s horrifying, and it’s wrong on every level, where it feels like the movie crossed a line and kept walking.

But this is also where Oldboy stops being just disturbing and starts being genuinely unsettling in a deeper way.

Because the movie doesn’t let you stand at a safe distance.

The Audience Is Part of the Crime

Here’s the thing that makes Oldboy different from other movies with shocking twists – it doesn’t just reveal something awful, it makes you realize that you helped get there.

You rooted for Oh Dae-su, you wanted him to win, and you cared about his relationship with Mi-do, as the film encouraged that. where it framed their love as healing, as meaningful, as something worth protecting.

And now you have to deal with the fact that you supported something deeply wrong without knowing it, and that feeling of guilt doesn’t come from nowhere. – it’s the film asking you a question, quietly and relentlessly.

How easy is it to justify something when you don’t have all the information? How often do we decide something is good because it feels good?

Oldboy doesn’t lecture you about this though, i just lets you feel it, which is way more effective and also way more uncomfortable.

The Ending That Refuses to Let You Off the Hook

If the film ended with the reveal, it would still be memorable, but it doesn’t stop there, as it goes one step further, and this is where Oldboy becomes something I still can’t shake.

Oh Dae-su is given one final choice.

Mi-do doesn’t know the truth, as she loves him, and he loves her – he can tell her and destroy her life, or he can keep her in the dark and live with the consequences himself.

He chooses to forget.

He has his own memory erased so he can stay with her without the burden of knowing who she is to him, and this is not framed as a victory, neither is it comforting or romantic – it’s deeply sad and deeply disturbing, but it’s also painfully human.

The film doesn’t ask what’s legally or socially acceptable, as it asks something harder – what would you do if every option was wrong? What if the truth itself was unbearable?

Park Chan-wook Knows Exactly What He’s Doing, Which Is Almost Annoying

I should mention about Park Chan-wook, because pretending Oldboy just magically works without acknowledging the person steering the whole thing would be dishonest, and this movie does not stumble into greatness, it is carefully, almost cruelly controlled..

The tone is the biggest achievement, where Oldboy constantly shifts between grim, absurd, tender, violent, and quietly funny without breaking itself, and that’s not easy, as one wrong move and the whole thing would collapse into nonsense or parody, but it never does.

There’s also a weird confidence in how patient the movie is – he lets silence hang and he lets you think you understand what kind of film you’re watching, which is part of the trick.

By the time you realize what he’s actually doing, it’s already too late.

The Camera Is Calm Even When Everything Else Isn’t

The cinematography deserves its own moment too, because it’s doing a lot of quiet work behind the scenes, where the camera doesn’t panic, even when the characters do.

There are long takes that force you to stay with the action instead of cutting away to spare you, and the famous hallway fight mentioned earlier is again the obvious example, but it’s not the only one, as Park and his cinematographer let scenes unfold in real time more often than you’d expect, and it creates this exhausting, trapped feeling that mirrors Oh Dae-su’s mental state.

The framing is often slightly off, just enough to make you uncomfortable without screaming “symbolism,” where characters are boxed in by doorways, hallways, elevators, and narrow rooms, and even when they’re technically free, the world still feels tight around them.

And when the film does get stylized, bright colors show up in moments that should feel wrong., violence is sometimes framed almost too cleanly, which makes it more unsettling, not less, and there’s no sense of safety in the way things are shown.

I also love how the movie doesn’t romanticize misery – it doesn’t bathe suffering in soft lighting or dramatic slow motion, as when things are ugly, they’re just ugly.

Sound, Music, and the Absence of Comfort

The sound design and music in Oldboy also deserve credit, mostly because they know when to shut up.

The score is memorable but never constant, as it doesn’t tell you how to feel every second, as sometimes it disappears entirely, leaving you alone with whatever awful thing is happening onscreen.

When music does show up, it often feels ironic or unsettling rather than comforting – beautiful melodies play over scenes that should not feel beautiful at all, and that contrast sticks with you, as it’s another way the movie quietly messes with your emotional reactions.

Silence is used just as effectively, where long stretches without dialogue or music force you to sit with the discomfort instead of escaping it, and there’s no emotional hand-holding here -Park assumes you can handle it, even when you’re not sure you can.

Why Oldboy Still Matters

A lot of films want to shock you, but Oldboy wants to confront you, where it forces you to sit with ideas about guilt, revenge, love, and truth without giving you a clean answer at the end, where it questions whether ignorance can ever be mercy, whether love can exist without truth, and whether moving forward always means progress, or whether sometimes it just means running away with better excuses.

What makes Oldboy so good is that it doesn’t pretend people are better than they are, and it also doesn’t pretend they’re monsters for the sake of it, as everyone in this movie is broken in a way that feels uncomfortably believable.

Lee’s revenge is monstrous, but it comes from real pain.

Oh Dae-su’s choices are wrong, but they’re rooted in fear and love and exhaustion.

No one escapes clean.

And neither do we.

I don’t recommend Oldboy lightly, as it’s not something you casually throw on because you’re bored, as this is a film that demands something from you, and it doesn’t apologize for that.

But if you’re willing to engage with something difficult, something that doesn’t hand you answers or comfort, Oldboy is one of the most effective films I’ve ever seen at doing exactly what art should do, which is mess with you in ways you didn’t expect and don’t fully understand right away.

That’s why Oldboy is so good.

Oldboy Trailer

Simon Leasher

A lover of cinema for over 35 years, I have watched many films from around the world in many different genres, yet I still normally always come back to trashy slasher horror films when in doubt. More

And yes, The Godfather 2 is better than The Godfather.