Park Chan-Wook’s ‘Oldboy’ is 20

In the early 2000s, adventurous film fans, looking for some counter programming, started buzzing about how Korean cinema could be the next exciting new thing in world cinema.

Bootlegged copies of Korean films started being shared amongst movie fans, titles including “Memories of a Murder,” “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring,” “Peppermint Candy,” “Oasis,” and “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.”

I vividly remember the first time I saw Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy.” A friend of mine, who had returned from Korea, had brought a DVD copy of it back from his trip and told me I had to watch it. The English subtitles were, to put it mildly, not the best, but I was completely floored by it.

To celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary, Neon is re-releasing Oldboy in U.S. cinemas on August 16. Park personally supervised a digital restoration and remastering of the film in 4K HDR for the occasion.

“Oldboy” went on to screen at Cannes the following year, where the Quentin Tarantino-led jury gave it the Grand Jury Prize (second place), but rumors had always pointed towards Tarantino wanting to give it the Palme d’Or.

If anything, it’s still surprising that Tarantino’s jury did not reward it the Palme and instead went for a political statement by giving the prize to Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”.

Stories about the jury deliberating for hours about whether to honor Park or Moore are now the stuff of Cannes legend. A THR piece tackling “Oldboy” at 20 confirms what we already knew: Tarantino fell madly in love with the movie.

Members of Park’s team say they spotted Tarantino in the crowd at no fewer than three separate screenings of “Oldboy” during Cannes, including the international premiere. (Tilda Swinton, also on the jury that year, jokingly warned Park to watch out because Tarantino would probably “steal a lot” from Oldboy.)

That year’s jury clearly made the wrong decision. “Fahrenheit 9/11” was a spur of the moment win, a way for the jury to come together and make a political statement against the war in Iraq.

“Old Boy” has stood the test of time, its manic energy and feverish violence have been replicated but not duplicated in other films. Choi Min-sik's performance was intensely brilliant. It also featured one of the best twist endings I had ever seen in a movie.

In 2021, Trevor Treharne, the editor of KoreanScreen, asked if I could participate in a massive poll of international film critics. The aim was simple, to put together the 100 Greatest Korean Films Ever.

Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” finished at #4, right behind Bong Joon-Ho’s “Parasite,” “Memories of A Murder” and Lee Chang-Dong’s “Burning.” Its legacy still lingers to this day.

Spike Lee messily remade “Oldboy” in 2013, failing to capture the excitement of the original. Most critics agreed. Although, for some reason, The New Yorker’s Richard Brody still believes that the remake is better than the original.