Hi, Movie Recaps here.
Today I will show you an action, drama, mystery film from 2020, titled Oldboy.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
The movie begins in 2003.
Our protagonist, Oh Dae-su, is on top of a building, holding a man over the edge by his
tie and telling him he wants him to hear his story.
The flashbacks begin then: in 1988, Dae-su is arrested for drunkenness.
After causing a lot of trouble for the police officers during his whole stay, he's finally
bailed out by his best friend No Joo-hwan.
Once they leave the station, they stop by a payphone so Dae-su can call his daughter
and tell her he'll be home for her birthday soon - he's even got a gift for her, a pair
of angel wings.
Joo-hwan wants to wish her a happy birthday too so the men change places, but when her
mom takes over the call and asks to speak to her husband, Joo-hwan looks around and
is unable to find Dae-su anywhere.
The only clue is the wings left on the ground.
Dae-su wakes up in a sealed hotel room.
Food is brought to him through a trap-door, but the person that brings it won't answer
any of his questions.
He doesn't know why he's been captured or for how long he'll be there.
Every time a melody is played, a gas is released inside the room that puts him to sleep, his
captors use those moments to enter the room and cut his hair, grab some of his used things,
clean up, change his clothes and take blood from his body.
As days pass, Dae-su keeps himself busy by keeping a journal, shadowboxing, and watching
tv.
It's through the tv that he learns his wife has been murdered and he's being framed for
it, his captors used his blood and used glass to plant fake evidence.
The despair he feels from hearing the news makes him hallucinate that ants are coming
out of his body; it also causes him to attempt to kill himself, but his captors save him
from death.
Since so many years pass, he starts tattooing a line for each of them on his hand.
One day, his dinner comes with an extra chopstick, so Dae-su decides to keep one and starts using
it to dig a hole in the wall.
By the time he makes enough progress to have a chance to escape, fifteen years have passed
since the day he was caught.
However, he never gets to use his hole because he is put to sleep by the gas again and this
time, a woman enters the room and hypnotizes him before he's sent away in a suitcase.
He wakes up hours later and jumps out of the suitcase to find himself wearing a fancy new
suit and even a nice watch, his notebooks have been put in the suitcase as well.
His captors have left him on top of a building, where there's another man thinking of jumping
off the roof with his dog.
Dae-su is so shocked to see another human being again that he comes closer to touch
him and smell him as the man tells him that even though he's no better than a beast, doesn't
he have the right to live?
Dae-su repeats the question as the man tries to jump, but he's saved when Dae-su grabs
his tie, bringing us back to the beginning of the movie.
After he tells the man the story of his confinement, Dae-su leaves the roof before the man can
tell him his own story in return.
He rides the elevator together with a woman, which makes him stick his body to a corner
so he doesn't do anything inappropriate, although he does steal her sunglasses.
As he leaves the building, we see the body of the man from the roof fall on a nearby
car.
Thinking he can't call any friends or relatives because he's technically a fugitive, Dae-su
comes across a group of thugs and steals a cigarette from them.
This angers the boys, causing them to start a fight that Dae-su uses as a chance to test
his training.
He easily beats them all.
Afterward, he goes to a sushi bar and stares at the fish tank at the entrance as a mysterious
beggar approaches him to give him a cellphone and a wallet with money before telling him
not to ask him questions because he doesn't know anything.
After the beggar leaves, Dae-su enters the sushi bar and meets Mi-do, a young chef that
thinks she's met him before.
Dae-su thinks she knows her as well, but from tv.
He asks her to serve him something alive before his phone rings, it's his anonymous captor,
telling him his identity doesn't matter, the important factor is the why.
The conversation is overheard by Mi-do and something Dae-su says gives her a shock.
She serves him a living octopus, which Dae-su eats without hesitation, impressing Mi-do.
But when she touches his hand, he passes out.
He wakes the next day at Mi-do's place, she's been taking care of his fever and is now reading
his journals.
Dae-su takes them from her hands and explains that lack of sunlight over a long time leads
to deficiencies in vitamins A and E, which means he lacks immunity against influenza.
After Mi-do grabs a knife and tells him not to follow her into the bathroom, Dae-su finds
a package of suppositories, which is the only way Mi-do could give him medicine while was
unconscious.
This causes him to enter a frenzy and go into the bathroom to abuse her, but she makes him
stop by hitting him with the knife.
Mi-do tells Dae-su that she is interested in him but she needs time before she's ready
to be intimate with him.
Sometime later, Mi-do pretends to be a journalist to get some information about Dae-su's daughter.
They find out she's been adopted by foreigners, they also obtain her number and a map to Dae-su's
wife's grave.
Mi-do offers him to call his daughter or even take him to see the grave, but Dae-su refuses,
saying first he has to get revenge.
Dae-su and Mi-do start visiting different restaurants to test the dumplings and find
the providers of his prison food.
One afternoon, after another failed attempt, Mi-do is chatting online with a man using
the nickname Evergreen, who knows who Dae-su is and that he's living with Mi-do.
She tells him he's just a random guy she's always chatted with about sushi, but now Dae-su
thinks he can't trust Mi-do anymore.
After grabbing a hammer from her cupboard, he leaves the apartment to go to one more
restaurant, which finally turns out to be the one that has been providing his food for
the past fifteen years.
Dae-su follows a deliveryman to the building where he had been kept prisoner and gets rid
of the guard by hitting him with his hammer.
Then he enters an office where he meets the warden, Mr. Park.
He explains that they keep a 7.5-floor private prison, where people can pay to have others
incarcerated, he also mentions they guard the identity of their clients with their lives.
This causes Dae-su to tie him up and start torturing him by extracting his teeth with
the hammer.
When he finally agrees to talk, Mr. Park says he doesn't know who paid for Dae-su's captures
and never saw his face, but he does have the recording of the conversation.
After retrieving the cassette, he tries to leave the building, but a group of guards
tries to stop him.
He fights all of them at the same time, and while they do manage to throw him on the floor
a couple of times and even stab him, Dae-su doesn't give up and stands up again, successfully
beating all of them by the time he makes it to the end of the hallway.
There are more thugs waiting for him in the elevator, but he beats those too before leaving
the building while covered in blood.
Not feeling well, he falls in the middle of the street, so a man helps him up and gets
him a taxi.
When this man says his name and gives the driver Mi-do's exact address, Dae-su realizes
it's his captor, the same person who had been chatting with Mi-do on the internet.
While a mysterious someone takes pictures of them from a safe distance, Dae-su gets
his wounds patched up by Mi-do and finally listens to the tape after she falls asleep.
The voice says he wants Dae-su to be imprisoned for fifteen years, the reason being he talks
too much.
The next day, Dae-su goes to visit Joo-hwan at his internet café, which the person taking
the pictures predicted he would do.
After the friends hug, Dae-su plays the recording for Joo-hwan and asks him if he recognizes
the voice or knows who can hate him so much, but Joo-hwan has no idea.
Next, Dae-su uses one of the café computers to log in using Mi-do's account and Joo-hwan
searches for the user "Evergreen", who suddenly sends them a friend request that they accept.
His message says the statute of limitations has expired for Dae-su.
This makes Dae-su think again that he can't trust Mi-do, so he returns to her place and
ties her up to make her confess.
He's suddenly interrupted by a call from Joo-hwan, who has tracked the user "Evergreen" and found
his address, Dae-su is shocked to hear is across the street.
He enters an empty apartment and finally meets his captor: a wealthy man named Lee Woo-jin,
who is there with his bodyguard, Mr. Han.
Woo-jin tells Dae-su that now he knows the who he must find out the why, he gives him
five days to do so.
If Dae-su discovers his motives, Woo-jin will kill himself instead of Mi-do.
Furious, Dae-su runs to hit him, but Mr. Han stops him, Woo-jin also teases him saying
this way he'll never find out the why, which has been haunting him for years.
Dae-su considers giving Woo-jin the teeth torture, but Woo-jin shows him his chest scar
and tells him he has a pacemaker, so torture would kill him pretty quickly.
He also says he asked the doctor to give him a special remote control that allows him to
turn off the pacemaker whenever he wants and shows the control to Dae-su, who understands
he can't anything to him if he wants to know the truth because Woo-jin can kill himself
first.
Dae-su rushes back to the apartment after Woo-jin points out he's left Mi-do alone for
too long and finds her captured by Mr. Park and his thugs.
They grab Dae-su and are about to pull the teeth torture on him as revenge, but they're
interrupted by a call from Woo-jin and the appearance of Mr. Han, who is carrying a suitcase
full of money.
Mr. Park accepts the money in exchange for not hurting Dae-su, although he does hit him
once before leaving.
Dae-su is angry and wants to cut Mr. Park's hand for touching Mi-do, but they ignore him
when he asks them to fight him.
Now that he can trust her again, Dae-su makes Mi-do pack her things and quit her job so
they can run away.
Woo-jin learns this information and sends people to follow them.
The couple makes it to a hotel and makes love for the first time, falling asleep after they're
done.
Suddenly, the room is filled with gas and Woo-jin shows up, touching Mi-do inappropriately
while Mr. Han leaves a purple box on the table.
The next morning, Dae-su and Mi-do open the box and are shocked to find Mr. Park's hand
inside.
This is an obvious reference to the threat Dae-su had made and makes him realize Woo-jin
has planted a bug on them, so they go to an electronic shop to get the bugs removed.
Afterward, they go to Joo-hwan's café, where Mi-do's searches for businesses called "Evergreen"
and gets a reaction from the men when she mentions Evergreen Old Boys - that's the school
Dae-su and Joo-hwan went to.
When Dae-un and Mi-do pay the school a visit and check yearbooks, they find two things.
First, a purple envelope with a flier belonging to a hair salon.
And second, Woo-jin went to that school as well together with his sister, Soo-ah, who
died when she fell in the river.
Dae-su calls Joo-hwan to ask him if he remembered the Lee siblings, and Joo-hwan tells Soo-ah
was a tart that would sleep with everyone.
This is heard by Woo-jin, who has been in the café all this time to spy on them, and
makes him furious, causing him to reveal himself to Joo-hwan to beat him to death.
Then he picks up the call and tells Dae-su his sister wasn't a tart and that he's killed
Joo-hwan.
Dae-su promises to kill him for it.
The next day, Dae-su visits Mr. Park at the prison building.
Mi-do is shocked to see the tiny room he had to live in for fifteen years, and Mr. Park
is happy to have his ring returned to him.
This makes him accept to work with Dae-su, since an enemy of his enemy is his friend.
After leaving Mi-do locked in there for her own safety and asking Mr. Park to let her
go after the fifth, Dae-su goes to the hair salon from the flier.
There, the hairdresser tells him is very unlikely that Soo-ah committed suicide because of some
rumors, it had to be a different reason, like pregnancy.
She also thinks Soo-ah wasn't a tart and that she actually was seeing somebody but she doesn't
know whom.
When she calls her daughter to ask her, she's told that Dae-su should be the one to know
the answer.
Dae-su decides to return to his old school as memories finally start coming back.
On his last day before transferring, he had followed Soo-ah to a classroom and spied on
her while she met with Woo-jin.
First, he took some pictures of her, then they starting having intimacy right there
in the school.
Dae-su ran away as soon as he was seen by Soo-ah, but he still told Joo-hwan about what
he saw before leaving, and Joo-hwan told the rest of the school.
These rumors are what caused Soo-ah to kill herself and the reason why Woo-jin wants revenge.
He's given Dae-su time until July 5th to find this out because that's the date of Soo-ah's
death.
After visiting Mi-do at the prison room to tell her the whole story and get a goodbye
hug, Dae-su goes to Woo-jin's penthouse, which he knows the address of thanks to some clues
Woo-jin had casually dropped when quoting some proverbs.
He finds the right building but the elevator asks him for a special code he can't decipher,
thankfully Mr. Han and Woo-jin arrive then and ride the elevator with him after pressing
the right password.
Mr. Han gives Woo-jin a gun before they make it to the penthouse, where Woo-jin sends two
of his guards after Dae-su.
They're quickly killed with a toothbrush he had picked at Mi-do's room before coming here,
and when he goes after Mr. Han, he just tells him to talk things out.
Dae-su notices the apartment has many pictures of Soo-ah on the wall while telling Woo-jin
that he remembers everything now, so he knows the reason why he was locked up.
This means he's won the game and Woo-jin should kill himself as promised.
But Woo-jin just laughs and tells him that the rumors grew so much that they became about
Soo-ah being pregnant, which Soo-ah started believing after a while.
This is the real reason why she killed herself.
Dae-su doesn't believe him, he now thinks Woo-jin killed her because he's found a picture
of her from the day she died.
Woo-jin ignores these accusations and finishes telling his story.
It turns out both Dae-su and Mi-do were hypnotized so they could meet at her restaurant and leave
together to then fall in love.
He also points out Dae-su's mistake was asking why he was locked up when he should've been
wondering why Woo-jin has let him go, then he shows Dae-su a purple box for him to open.
Inside, Dae-su finds a photo book with pictures of his family, and as his little girl grows
older with each photo, he discovers something terrifying: Mi-do is his daughter.
While she is in the prison room playing with the angel wings her father had bought all
those years ago, Dae-su cries out in despair and grabs a pair of scissors from the table
to kill Woo-jin with, but his attacks are constantly countered by Mr. Han.
During his last attempt, Dae-su manages to stab Mr. Han in the ear, causing him to get
furious and try to kill him.
Woo-jin doesn't want Dae-su to die yet, though, so he asks Mr. Han to stop.
And since his orders are ignored, he has no other choice but to shoot Mr. Han.
When Dae-su asks him if Mi-do knows about all this, Woo-jin confesses Mr. Park is still
working for him and the hand in the box had been a trap, he's also been protecting Mi-do
since she was three.
Dae-su calls her to check on her and Mi-do tells her she's also be given a purple box,
but she hasn't opened it yet.
Dae-su tells her to wait before hanging up and falling to his knees to beg Woo-jin not
to tell Mi-do about his identity.
He accepts Soo-ah's death being his fault, recalls the song from their old school and
even starts acting like a dog, making Woo-jin laugh when he starts licking his shoe.
Since none of this is working, Dae-su decides to pick up the scissors and cut his own tongue
for having talked too much.
This is the act that finally makes Woo-jin feel some pity for him, so he calls Mr. Park
and tells him to keep the box closed.
After threatening Dae-su with his gun, Woo-jin leaves the penthouse, dropping the remote
control of his pacemaker on his way out.
Dae-su picks it up and presses the button to kill him, but it turns out Woo-jin had
been lying: what the control does is activate the apartment's speakers, which start playing
a recording of Dae-su making love to his daughter.
In the elevator, Woo-jin has a flashback of Soo-ah's death, he had tried to save her but
she decided to jump anyway.
Overwhelmed with grief, Woo-jin shoots himself in the head.
Many days later, we find Dae-su sitting in the middle of a forest with the hypnotist,
who is reading his notes and his request to help him forget about the fact Mi-do is his
daughter.
The woman says she has no reason to help him but there's a line that has convinced her
to do it; it's the question the man on the rooftop had asked Dae-su: "even though I am
no better than a beast, don't I have the right to live?".
After going through the hypnosis process, Dae-su wakes up lying on the snow and is found
by Mi-do shortly afterward.
When she asks him why he is out here, he looks behind him but doesn't find the hypnotist,
leaving it up to the audience to decide if she had been real or not.
The movie ends with the couple hugging and Dae-su smiling when Mi-do tells him she loves
him.