Thunder out of Korea

The picture skates along so deftly, and through so many movements, that it feels like many pictures in one. Bits of "Oldboy" are downright funny, although many of the jokes are too bleak to be characterized even as black humor. The movie also features a number of beautifully staged action sequences, including one in which Dae-su fends off a half-dozen baddies in a long corridor with nothing more than a hammer. Park shows us the action in one unbroken shot, moving the camera along horizontally (and slowly) so we can take in the full spectacle of the actors' movements -- the sequence has the feel of a panoramic battle scene etched on a Greek vase. And the movie's score, by Yeong-wook Jo, mixes Morricone-style melodrama with delicate Italianate strings -- there's room for it all in the picture's shifting array of moods.

There are moments in "Oldboy" that some viewers have difficulty with, including an instance of self-mutilation and a sequence in which several teeth are pulled with the claw-end of a hammer. Park cuts away artfully, in both instances -- what we don't see disturbs us much more than what we actually do. These sequences may be graphic, or at least suggestively graphic, but they're not overtly violent, and they don't serve the purpose that violence so often does in movies: They're not exhilarating or cathartic; if anything, they intensify the pathos of the story, even when (as in the tooth-pulling scene) they're also darkly funny. Dae-su is a rather doughy, jolly fellow before his imprisonment, a happy-go-lucky but bland presence. He emerges from those 15 years as a much more complicated creature, but he's also something of a monster. In the scenes of his long imprisonment, we hear him explain, in voice-over, all the roles television can fill for a lonely person: school, home, friend, lover. When he gets to the word "friend," Boris Karloff's Frankenstein flickers on the screen. Later, when Dae-su is freed, he stumbles toward the first human being he sees, extending a clumsy hand to touch the man's face.

The moment is moving, but Park quickly flips it around to show us that Dae-su's suffering hasn't instilled any compassion in him (at least, not yet). "Oldboy" is a story of redemption, but it's not an oversimplified one. As Choi plays him, Dae-su isn't immediately sympathetic; in fact, it takes an astonishingly long time for us to feel anything for him. His face, framed by a thatch of bristly black hair, often wears a look of comic anguish, as if the distinguishing features of the comedy and tragedy masks had been mixed up. The bags under his eyes are a metaphor for the emotional weight he carries; he looks like a man who's had the soul kicked out of him. But as the story progresses, he becomes more and more handsome: There's something both virile and tender about him in his scenes with Mido. (Gang, with her softly rounded features and dreamy dark eyes, gives a beautifully shaded performance.) The changes we see in him are so transfixing that his ultimate humiliation, in the movie's climax, is nearly impossible to bear.

But "Oldboy" isn't depressing. Park gives us the release we need and deserve, in exchange for the trust we've placed in him. There are scenes that may seem gratuitous, or at least just gimmicky, as you're watching them. But after the movie's over, you see how carefully they fit into Park's vision. When Dae-su first stumbles into Mido's restaurant, after he's just been sprung from captivity, he makes a request that she doesn't quite understand. He repeats it: "I said, I want to eat something alive." So she brings him an octopus, a moist, pearly-gray thing still moving on the plate. He bites the head off, and then shovels the tentacles into his mouth; they curl and clutch at his lips, as if making one last desperate grab at life.

The scene is both horrifying and a little funny, particularly when, immediately after having devoured this weird meal, Dae-su passes out on his plate. The meaning of the sequence is clear: After having been imprisoned for so long, Dae-su has no idea how to start living again. He seems to hope, irrationally, that he can jump-start the dead circuits inside him by eating something that's still moving.

That logic is, of course, futile. But to people who keep trekking to the movies, hoping for a few hours of escape at least and transcendence at best, it probably makes a rueful kind of sense. So many pictures, even some very well-made ones, seem dead on arrival. But "Oldboy" is desperately alive, something Quentin Tarantino was clearly aware of when he tried to rally support for the picture among his fellow jury members at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. And when something's this alive, Hollywood smells money: An American remake of "Oldboy" is reportedly in the works.

But "Oldboy," as delicate as a snowflake and as hardy as a thumbprint, will not be duplicated. It's a dazzling work of pop-culture artistry, a product of its time, maybe, but not, strictly speaking, just a product. "Oldboy" sends us home with more than we came in with. We leave the theater knowing we've experienced something, instead of just feeling we've been bought -- or, worse yet, had.

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