"Oldboy" begins as a revenge fantasy and evolves into something much more complex and redemptive. It's a thrilling picture, and in places a funny one, yet it can't be classified as an action picture or a comedy -- it's too infused with tragic poetry to be so conveniently buttonholed. "Oldboy" is a viscerally charged picture, and an exceedingly beautiful one, but its beauty springs directly from its anguish. It's like a flower watered with blood.

The hero and the victim of "Oldboy" is Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), who is, when we first meet him, a gregarious but average Seoul businessman who's gotten a little drunk after a night on the town. He's arrested for his disorderly conduct, detained briefly, and released into the custody of a friend. That's when his nightmare begins: Before he can return home to his wife and young daughter (it's her birthday, and he's bought her a pair of white-feather angel wings as a gift), he's abducted mysteriously. Oh Dae-su doesn't know who has kidnapped him, or why. But whatever he's done, his tormentor has gone to inhumane lengths to make him suffer: He's confined to a seedy hotel room, furnished with a TV set, a bed and a "Night Gallery"-style clown painting, and fed a diet of nothing but fried dumplings -- for 15 years.

And then one day Oh Dae-su -- toughened up from exercising regularly in his room, his knuckles permanently callused from using the wall as a sparring partner -- is pitched back out into the real world, without ever having learned why he was confined for so long, or the identity of his captor. He has nowhere to go (during his imprisonment, he learns from watching TV that he has been framed for his wife's murder). He has, however, been provided with a cellphone and a wallet full of cash. The phone rings, and he answers it: The mysterious voice on the other end challenges Oh Dae-su to find out what his crime was. This isn't the beginning of Oh Dae-su's freedom; it's merely a new and more cruel type of confinement.

But on his first evening of what he at least perceives to be his freedom, he does meet a lovely young sushi chef named Mido (Gang Hye-jung), who spirits him away to the safety and comfort of her small flat after he passes out, from exhaustion and illness, in her restaurant. Mido is eager to help Dae-su put the pieces of his life together: She learns where his daughter is living (supposedly, in Sweden) and treks with him to every restaurant in the city in order to find the exact dumplings he was served during his confinement.

"Oldboy"

Directed by Park Chanwook

Starring Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Gang Hye-jung

The closer Mido gets to Dae-su, the more she's endangered -- at one point at the hands of Dae-su himself, who believes Mido may have betrayed him. And as Dae-su learns more about the enemy who imprisoned him, he realizes that Mido is in even more danger than he is: As his nemesis tells him, coldly, "I'm going to kill every woman you love until your death."

Explaining so few of the plot details of "Oldboy" makes it seem like your standard-issue clever thriller. But to explain any more would spoil the pleasure of the plot's many surprises and intricacies. Some viewers might see "Oldboy" as little more than a puzzle movie, a mechanical novelty along the lines of the popular but stultifyingly shallow "Memento." If that's all some viewers get out of "Oldboy," it's their loss. This is Park's fifth movie: His first hit in Korea was the 2000 thriller "JSA: Joint Security Area." The 2002 "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" (which will be released here later this year) was a nicely structured but cold little picture about the futility of revenge. "Oldboy" is a deeper, warmer picture that delves into a similar theme. It's also a story of potentially doomed romance. In some ways, "Oldboy" feels more Russian than Korean -- it's fitting that the movie's coda takes place in a forest draped in fresh snow, a setting that speaks equally of desolation and fresh new beginnings.

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