oldboy... spoiler included...

finally got to watch park chan-wook's oldboy... one of the most talked about korean movie ever... it even won grand jury prize at cannes a couple of years ago... the only reason why i hesitated so far was a) i don't do that well with violent movie, especially with gross physical one... which this movie was famous for... i still have finished watching reservoir dogs for the same reason... after watching a bit of that torture scene on a chair, i couldn't take it... b) was worried that i might not like this movie and got frustrated with all the attention it received from the west... it's the same reason why i cannot stand kim ki-duk's film... think they are not bad but they are not as amazing as the critics are making them to be... meanwhile there are so many other good korean movies that are not getting attention from the west because it doesn't have that violence...
but i have to say i enjoyed the movie quite a bit... yes, i had to close my eyes when the ants crawled out of dae-su's skin, when he was eating live octopus and yes, when his tongue got cut off... yikes... but didn't think they were there only for the shock value... was really a part of the story and had to be there... and also found it very funny in many ways... i watched it in korean so i don't know how well these funny scenes were translated though... especially at the very beginning when he was so drunk at a police station was hilarious... which was mainly improvised by impressive choi min-sik... and some of the editing were really amazing... when he was trying to locate that chinese restaurant and when he was back at his old school... and yes, that one long take fight scene which had no edit was pretty great... and the story and the characters were pretty believable... and all the actors were pretty damn good... although the last twist was a bit too much... especially if you watched the director's interview which was an extra material on DVD, it makes you frown a bit... but oh, well... human desires...
still cannot say this movie changed my life in any ways... i think it's truly great that park chan-wook along with many other korean directors are able to come up with their own styles of movie makings... just hope that they won't be repeating themselves due to all the success though...