Movies Hunter here.
Today, I have brought a 2003 action drama mystery film called “Oldboy.”
It follows the story of a man who is abducted by a mysterious man and is imprisoned for
the next 15 years.
But one day, he is surprisingly released and sets out on a mission to find his captor.
But the journey is not easy, as he will discover some horrific truths of the past which will
haunt him for the rest of his life.
To know what happens, watch till the end.
The film begins in the year 1988 when a businessman named Oh Dae-su gets arrested for drunkenness
on the night of his daughter’s fourth birthday.
Sometime later, his friend named Joo-hwan arrives at the police station to bail out
Dae-su.
Dae-su then calls his daughter on phone and tells her to wait for him.
But before he could go home, he mysteriously gets kidnapped, leaving behind the gift he
bought for her.
When Dae-su wakes up, he finds himself locked in a hotel room.
He has no idea why he was kidnapped or who his captors are.
He is given food every day through a small hatch at the bottom of the door.
Once in a while, his captors would release gas in the room, making Dae-su fall unconscious.
His captors would then cut his hair, change his clothes, and clean his room.
Dae-su would spend most of his days watching TV, which also helps him learn about the current
affairs of the outside world.
One year later, he learns that his wife Kim Ja-hyun has been murdered.
Since the police found Dae-su’s blood and fingerprints at the crime scene, Dae-su becomes
the prime suspect.
Dae-su is heartbroken by this and tries to commit suicide, but his captors would simply
gas the room to treat him.
So instead of committing suicide, Dae-su decides to write down the names of all the people
who have a grudge against him.
As years pass by, he also begins to train himself by doing shadowboxing, as he plans
to take revenge on his captors.
Six years after he was kidnapped, Dae-su begins to dig a tunnel through the wall using only
a metal chopstick.
Dae-su keeps honing his fighting skills and keeps on digging the tunnel.
Fifteen years after his imprisonment, Dae-su finally manages to dig the tunnel big enough
to pass through.
But before he could escape, sleeping gas is released in the room.
Once Dae-su falls unconscious, a woman enters the room and hypnotizes Dae-su.
When Dae-su regains consciousness, he finds himself on a rooftop.
Dae-su then leaves the building and walks around the city.
He comes across a group of thugs who try to bully him.
Dae-su decides to test his fighting skills on them and successfully beats them all.
Later, a mysterious homeless man approaches him and gives him some money and a cell phone.
Dae-su enters a sushi restaurant to eat some food.
There he meets Mi-do, a young chef.
Dae-su gets a call from a mysterious man who claims to be the one who imprisoned him.
The man then taunts Dae-su to find him and learn the reason why he was imprisoned.
Dae-su is so frustrated that he gulps down an entire living octopus.
But he then faints because of a high fever.
When he wakes up, he finds himself in Mi-Do’s apartment.
He learns that he has a fever and Mi-do gave him some medicines to recover quickly.
Mi-do then goes to the bathroom and tells Dae-su that the lock is broken.
So she warns him not to follow her, as she has a knife.
But Dae-su still goes after her and forces himself on her.
Mi-do fends him off by hitting him on the head with the knife.
Dae-su is ashamed of his actions and prepares to leave the apartment.
Mi-do stops him and tells him that she likes him too.
She explains that she too wants to mate with him, but since they hardly know each other,
she is not ready yet.
The two reconcile and comfort each other.
Afterwards, Dae-su decides to look for his daughter with Mi-do.
They learn that his daughter was adopted by a Swedish couple.
So Dae-su decides to give up on contacting his daughter.
Dae-su and Mi-do return home, where Dae-su learns that Mi-do has been chatting with a
person named Evergreen on her computer, who reveals himself to be Dae-su’s captor.
Dae-su feels he cannot trust Mi-do and leaves the apartment.
He then visits all the restaurants to find the food that he was given during his imprisonment.
He manages to locate the Chinese restaurant that made his prison food.
He follows the delivery boy and gets to the building where he was imprisoned.
Dae-su breaks into the building and captures Mr Park, the warden.
He learns the place is actually a private prison where people can pay to have others
incarcerated.
Dae-su tortures the warden and forces him to reveal why he was imprisoned.
Mr Park points him to the tape recording, which is a recording of Mr Park and the person
responsible for Dae-su incarceration.
Dae-su takes the recordings and attempts to leave but gets attacked by the guards.
Despite being stabbed, Dae-su fights all the guards and manages to defeat them.
He then leaves the building but collapses shortly afterwards.
A mysterious man comes out of nowhere and helps him by putting him inside a taxi.
The man then reveals himself to be Dae-su’s captor.
But since Dae-su is injured, he is unable to do anything but stare at him helplessly.
Back at home, Mi-do nurses him.
Later, Dae-su goes to meet Joo-hwan and asks him if he recognizes the voice of the client.
But Joo-hwan cannot identify the client.
Instead, he manages to find Mi-do’s online friend, who again taunts Dae-su.
Joo-hwan manages to find the address of the captor.
Dae-su rushes to the address where he finally meets his captor, a man named Woo-jin and
his bodyguard.
Dae-su tries to attack but is incapacitated by the bodyguard.
Woo-jin tells Dae-su that he cannot kill him, because if he does, then he will never learn
why he was imprisoned.
Woo-jin gives Dae-su an ultimatum: if Dae-su manages to find Woo-jin’s identity, then
Woo-jin will kill himself.
But if he fails, then Woo-jin will kill Mi-do.
So Dae-su has no choice but to play along.
Dae-su returns to Mi-do’s apartment but gets attacked by Mr Park and his men.
Just when Mr Park is about to torture Dae-su, Woo-jin’s bodyguard shows up at the door
and offers Mr Park a suitcase full of money to let Dae-su go.
Mr Park accepts the money and leaves the apartment.
Dae-su threatens to cut off Mr Park’s hand but is too tired.
Later, Dae-su and Mi-do leave the apartment.
They go to a hotel, where they mate passionately.
Afterwards, they are gassed and Woo-jin enters the room.
When Dae-su and Mi-do wake up, they find a package left by Woo-jin, which contains Mr
Park’s severed hand.
Later, with Mi-do’s help, Dae-su discovers that Evergreen refers to his old high school.
So he goes to the school and learns that Woo-jin was a fellow student.
Dae-su calls Joo-hwan to confirm Woo-jin’s identity, but he doesn’t remember him.
So Dae-su asks him about Woo-jin’s sister Soo-ah, who also used to study with them.
Joo-hwan reveals that Soo-ah also attended the school at the same time and had a promiscuous
reputation.
But one day, she died drowning in the river.
Joo-hwan continues to talk bad things about Soo-ah.
Unbeknownst to him, Woo-jin is also there and is listening to him.
Woo-jin gets so furious about this that he beats Joo-hwan to death.
Later, Dae-su takes Mi-do to his old prison and asks Mr Park to keep her safe from Woo-jin.
Mr Park also reveals that he drugged Dae-su several times and then hypnotized him.
Later, Dae-su goes to meet another classmate and asks her about Soo-ah.
She reveals that there were some rumours about Soo-ah that she was pregnant.
The rumours were spread by Dae-su himself before he transferred to a school in Seoul.
Dae-su recalls that one day at school, he unintentionally witnessed Woo-jin and Soo-ah
getting intimate.
Not knowing that the two were siblings, Dae-su told Joo-hwan about this, who then told his
friends.
Dae-su manages to track down Woo-jin at his penthouse and confronts him.
Dae-su accuses Woo-jin of using hypnosis to erase the memory of what he witnessed in school.
But Woo-jin says that he did not mess with Dae-su’s memories.
Dae-su simply forgot about it because he thought it was insignificant.
Soon after Dae-su left the school, the rumour of Soo-ah being pregnant began to spread like
wildfire.
Even Soo-ah began to believe the rumour and ended up killing herself as she feared public
humiliation.
Dae-su implies that Woo-jin killed his own sister, as he was afraid of fathering her
child.
But Woo-jin denies the allegation.
He reveals that after he kidnapped Dae-su, he hypnotized Dae-su and Mi-do independently
and caused the two to commit incest as well.
He then shows Dae-su a photo album of himself, his wife, and his daughter.
The remaining photos are of his daughter growing older.
Dae-su is horrified to learn that his daughter is none other than Mi-do.
Enraged, Dae-su attacks Woo-jin but is stopped by Woo-jin’s bodyguard.
But when the bodyguard tries to kill Dae-su, Woo-jin kills his own bodyguard.
He then reveals that Mr Park is still working for him.
Mr Park is with Mi-do and is ordered to give a similar album to her as well.
But Dae-su tells Mi-do over the phone not to open the box and wait for him to return.
Dae-su begs Woo-jin to not let this happen.
He gets on his hands and knees and starts barking like a dog.
He even cuts off his tongue so that he will never talk too much.
Woo-jin is satisfied with Dae-su’s situation and tells Mr Park to take the box away.
He then readies to kill himself and Dae-su with one bullet, but stops and decides to
leave.
He wants Dae-su to suffer for the rest of his life knowing that he mated with his own
daughter.
As Woo-jin leaves, he gets a flashback of his sister’s death.
He is holding Soo-ah over the dam, trying to save her from killing herself.
But Soo-ah tells Woo-jin that she has no regret in her life and asks him to let go of her.
Woo-jin realises that even after getting his revenge, nothing will take his pain away.
So he kills himself to be free from this endless suffering.
Sometime later, Dae-su goes to meet the hypnotist hired by Woo-jin and asks her to help him
forget the memories from the penthouse.
Even though she didn’t want to help him, she was touched by his last sentence of the
letter, “Even though I am no more than a beast, don’t I have the right to live?”.
The hypnotist tells Dae-su to imagine himself in the penthouse and tells him to split his
personality to split into two, one will remember the secret and the other won’t.
The hypnotist then tells the one with the secret to walk away and for every step he
takes, he will age a year and will die when he reaches 70.
Later, Dae-su wakes up and finds Mi-do waiting for him.
She embraces Dae-su and tells him that she loves him.
Dae-su smiles after hearing this, but the smile then slowly turns into a look of grief
and pain.
So this was the story of “Oldboy.”
If you liked the story, then do watch the full film, and if you want to watch more such
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See you in the next hunt.