Old Tricks 
Oldboy surely is a landmark in Korean movie industry's recent boom. It was the movie to whom Tarantino wanted to give the Palme d'or in Cannes but didn't get it because Tilda Swinton managed to convince a short majority of the jury to give it to Michael Moore. But its Grand Prix in Cannes earned Park Chan-Wook and Choi Min-Sik Prizes from the Korean State. In a country in which a Prize won in a major festival in the West is the best shield against detractors, Park became Korean movie industry's most powerful man.
Oldboy is visually brilliant and CHOI Min-sik offers a huge performance. But the movie is not without a few flaws : pompous use of classical music, a final twist so ridiculous that it feels like "All of this for this?"... And Oldboy is trying so hard to impress that it ultimately is forgetting to be great cinema. Just like being a great guitar player doesn't mean you're a great songwriter, virtuosity isn't enough to make a Scorsese of a any director. A scene such as the famous one shot corner sequence is difficult to realize technically but it is nothing more than the pale imitation of videogame's most basic directing.
But the biggest flaw is there: Oldboy's purpose is nothing more than cheap philosophy. Being pure B cinema with high thematic ambition was achieved better by A History of Violence.
