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I'm so lost as to why this movie is widely praised. It's impossible to deny that Park Chan-wook is a stylish director and that this movie has some very impressive, memorable scenes. The hallway scene is famous in film buff circles and rightfully so. It's a memorable and exhilarating set piece that appears to be a single shot. Some of the visuals in the film were interesting too, like how the main character relives a flashback while running around his school grounds and the scene cuts between past and present.
Sadly, style isn't everything in a film. Oldboy's plot is beyond moronic. The villain's motivation makes no sense whatsoever and borders on B-movie level stupidity. Basically, the main character told everyone that the villain was banging his sister when they were young. This led to people telling others that the villain got his sister pregnant. As a result, the villain's sister commits suicide. So, to get back at the main character for telling people that he nailed his sister, he gets super rich and plans a massive 15-year scheme. This scheme involves locking up the main character in a prison cell that looks like a hotel room and hypnotizing him into falling in love with his daughter. By the time the main character gets out, he meets his daughter and bangs her, obviously not knowing yet that she's his daughter. After this happens, the villain says, "Ha ha ha, I got very rich and did all of this so you would bang your daughter. Now we both have committed incest and I have gotten vengeance for my sister's death." So the main character cuts his own tongue off for some reason, the villain shoots himself for some reason and the main character gets hypnotized again so that he forgets that he banged his daughter for some reason.
I hope that anyone who believes that this movie has a masterful plot can read that paragraph and get a grasp on how stupid this film is. The whole film is framed so that you're wondering what awful thing the main character did to get locked up for 15 years. The pay-off is literally just that he told people that some dude banged his sister, because the dude did bang his sister. I'm so awestruck at all of the praise this film has received. If you love the film for the style, fine. I can understand that. But to brand this film as some kind of master-class act in storytelling is absolutely unwarranted. It's not disturbing either, like many people want to believe. Yeah, the dude unknowingly bangs his daughter on screen. Have you watched Game of Thrones recently? There's also a scene where the main character pulls some guy's teeth out. It's pretty much all off screen. The general violence isn't bloody or difficult to watch either. Just your typically dude punches goons in the face type of deal. Overall, I thought this movie was dumb as bricks, but I'd recommend it if you want to kick back, watch some seriously cool scenes and laugh at the silly plot.
This is my third or fourth time watching this, and I always forget just how bad this episode is compared to most of them. It starts out fine, but it goes down the drain by the end. The whole "circus" thing is terrible, and it only gets worse as it ends. Shan is way too hammy to be a criminal boss. Haha, funny, she thinks Watson is Holmes because of what he said. No competent adult would actually think those things add up to him being Holmes, and this woman is supposed to be a boss of a multinational criminal organization. (Sure, he has the credit card and the check that are under the name Sherlock, but how about literally everything else in his wallet? Probably all say Watson.) Why would Zhi Zhu choke out Sherlock, but only to the point of giving him a hoarse voice for a bit? He could've slipped out undetected, seeing as Sherlock didn't know he was in there at first, or actually knocked him out. But, no, you get this half-assed assault that makes no sense instead.
In my memory, the Hounds of Baskerville episode is worse, but now I'm not sure after revisiting this.
EDIT: Nah, Hounds is still worse. But this one isn't good, either.
