Showing posts with label Mystery. Show all posts
Oldboy [2003]: Almost impossible to imitate
Cast: Min-sik Choi, Hye-jeong Kang, Ji-tae Yu
Directed by: Chan-wook Park
A drunken man [Oh Dae-Su] is arrested by the police. His friend bails him out and when this friend was making a telephone call, the man disappears only to wake up in a place that looked like a cheap hotel room. Little did he know that, he will be in that room for the next 15 years, day in, day out?
Oldboy tells the story of that man.
Time and again, a little tune plays and the room is filled with some kind of gas so as to faint him. He wakes up and notices that the room has been cleaned, his clothes have been changed and his hair and beard has been trimmed. This same routine goes for 15 years.
He doesn’t know who imprisoned him and why. There is a TV in the room being the only source of new information for him. There is a desk with a pen and a journal, he writes, finishing journals one after another. Through TV, he finds out that his wife has been murdered and his fingerprints and blood were found at the place of the crime. Thus he has been framed for the murder of her wife. He also found out from TV only that his little daughter is adopted in Sweden.
TV taught him everything, the martial art, the tragedies of the world and the fact that the world is racing ahead at a great pace. And then one day he has been released; he became unconscious after that regular tune and the gas and wakes up in a Red box only to realize that he is not in that room anymore and that the city where he was taken from has become faster than ever.
His abductor left some cash in his court pocket and a cellphone, intentionally leaving him resourced so that he could survive and find; who did it and why?
Now this is half the plot, the other half is even more complex, devastating and shows you the truest colors of revenge and vengeance.
Upon being free, he meets a young woman who he saw on the TV as Korea’s Chef of the year. This young woman is Mido. They talk and she comes to know of all he has gone through, she sympathizes with him, cares for him and falls in love with him.
When Oh Dae-su was abducted, for 15 years, he was only fed pot stickers, which is why its taste was imprinted on his memory. With the help of Mido, he visits every restaurant in the city and orders Pot Stickers so as to recognize the same taste, in order to find a trail to his abductor.
In an important scene, when Oh Dae-Su fights with more than 25 of his previous jailers with just a hammer in his hands. In this scene, more than a two dozen men are blocking his way to get him out of a building and because he is so occupied by revenge, he doesn’t even slow down after somebody injected a knife on his back.
When Oh Dae-su was abducted, for 15 years, he was only fed pot stickers, which is why its taste was imprinted on his memory. With the help of Mido, he visits every restaurant in the city and orders Pot Stickers so as to recognize the same taste, in order to find a trail to his abductor.
In an important scene, when Oh Dae-Su fights with more than 25 of his previous jailers with just a hammer in his hands. In this scene, more than a two dozen men are blocking his way to get him out of a building and because he is so occupied by revenge, he doesn’t even slow down after somebody injected a knife on his back.
In another brilliant scene, Oh went into a restaurant and asks “I want to eat something that is alive.” This shows his starvation is for life and not the food, considering the fact that he has not seen one living person in the last 15 years.
When the film started, Oh Dae-su was a good man who got drunk because he couldn't be with her little daughter on her birthday, and these 15 years made him a hardened vindictive man who reacts weirdly against emotional actions or any other act of kindness towards him.
Once Oh Dae-su finally confronts his abductor, there are some shocking revelations that unfold one after another. These revelations affect the viewers emotionally and mentally. They are shocking and deep.
All the three performances were class apart, the prisoner Oh Dae-Su [Min-sik Choi], the chef Mido [Hye-jeong Kang] and the abductor Woo-jin Lee [Ji-tae Yu].
Oldboy is a harsh film that offers no sympathy, leaves you devastated for what you watched and at the end make you have pity on the characters. This is a film which will be respected even after 50 years from now. Director Chan-wook Park has made something even he will find difficult to imitate.
This is why I hated the idea of its remake, but Spike Lee remade it and failed miserably. Some films should never be remade, tampered or even touched but only be respected for its existence.
Movie Geek’s Rating: ★★★★★
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[This post is a part of the A to Z Challenge in April 2014. Let's celebrate blogging.]
Tag :
2000s,
2003,
Challenges,
Chan-wook Park,
Drama,
Hye-jeong Kang,
Ji-tae Yu,
Min-sik Choi,
Mystery,
Reviews,
Thriller
Doodlebug [1997]: 3 minutes and you admit Nolan is a born genius
Before you read this review, Watch this short film which is only 3 minutes long.
Before Nolan made Memento, The Prestige, The batman films, Inception or any other mind blowing film, he made Doodlebug. Now calling Doodlebug as Nolan’s baby steps to film making may be a disrespect because this was in all senses a brilliant short film which shows no sign of the director being a first timer.
Long before he made us indulge in dreams within dreams within dreams or in the magic tricks by a couple of rival magicians, he started with Doodlebug. Doodlebug reflects the illusion with which Nolan makes his films. His mentality to make the audience use their brains at all times while watching his film is pretty much evident in this short film as well.
Christopher Nolan doesn't allow you to sit back and have fun with his films, you will have fun but you will have to figure out, this is how it is done while we are into a Nolan made film.
A man with his shoe in his hand is trying to hunt down a bug or something only to find later that he wasn't after the bug but a smaller version of himself, what comes later is even more disturbing. A greater version of the same man is hunting the man with a bigger shoe in his hand. So, there were 3 versions of him, one he is after and another who is after him.
What is brilliant is that he fascinates his audience in a short film of hardly 3 minutes. There might be no bug at all but the man’s phobia about bugs and his constant uneasiness that a bug might hurt him, so he is trying to hunt that disturbing thought and not the bug actually. This is why he kills it even after finding that it isn't a bug but his diminished version. He is so obsessed with it that he didn't even care to listen to the person on the phone.
This was brilliantly shot in black and white and was incredibly creative which only a genius can think of. Nolan did prove his genius act again and again after every couple of years. Either it’s the non-linear story line of Memento, the ultimate revelation of the prestige, the brilliant batman films or his tampering with dreams in Inception. Nolan never failed to impress. He is a true genius.
Movie Geek Rating: ★★★★
Cast: Jeremy Theobald
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
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Author: Amritt Rukhaiyaar
[This post is a part of the A to Z Challenge in April 2014. Let's celebrate blogging.]
Orphan [2009]: Disturbing yet Intelligent
Cast: Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman
Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra
To begin with, Orphan did surprise me, I thought of it as another B-Grade thriller with an obvious revelation at the climax, but no, it is really worth your time and money, it is actually one of the good films made in 2009. Yes, it is.
Orphan tells the story of a married couple, who just had a stillborn baby, decides to adopt an intelligent 9 year old Esther to fill that vacant space, the stillborn baby could have filled but Esther is not only a bright child who can paint like a pro, play piano and do everything perfectly, there is something strange about this girl, something really frightening.
Orphan is disturbing and gruesome but still very intelligent. By the time you will figure out that this girl is no ordinary child but is someone who posses demonic spirits, you will be punched in the face with that genius revelation, that brilliant thing, you never thought of.
The couple; Kate and John, already had a son, Daniel and a daughter, Max. Esther bonds quickly with Max by using sign language as Max is deaf. Daniel is not most friendly though with her. But still Esther succeeds to manipulate each one of them but Kate. Kate could feel that Esther is not quite what she seems.
This film has an amazing script which is executed excellently. If you have had enough of bad films, in the name of horror, you should watch orphan. It is a clever film with some great acting performances by most of the cast, but one who stands out is Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther. Isabelle delivers a powerful performance and her work is beyond the question that whether a viewer likes the film or not, because even if someone finds the film a mediocre piece of work, nobody disliked the way she portrayed Esther.
Orphan didn’t win any award and yes it didn’t deserve as well. Horror or Thriller hardly wins Oscar Awards anyway. Nevertheless there were certainly a dozen or two better films made in 2009. As a bottomline, I would say Orphan is certainly one of the most underrated horror films in American Cinema.
Movie Geek’s Rating: ★★★½
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