History Film / Oldboy2003

* NoAnimalsWereHarmed: ''Very'' averted. Four real octopuses were used for the eating scene. (Choi Min-sik, a Buddhist in real life, gave a prayer before eating each one.) On the other hand, it's also PlayedStraight, as the man who jumps to his death holding a dog near the beginning is holding a [[SpecialEffectsFailure rather obvious dummy]] when he lands.

* FiveFiveFive: Averted, as the address -- both the street number and PO box -- of Dae-su's daughter's foster parents in reality belongs to [[http://www.amaranten.se a hotel in Stockholm]].

* KillEmAll: Surprisingly averted in this {{Revenge}} story. Of the six named characters, [[spoiler: both of the leads survive, albeit one not exactly intact, as does a secondary villain.]]

Oh Dae-su is an alcoholic businessman with a wife and daughter who, after being released by the police following a night of drunken misconduct, is abruptly kidnapped without a trace. Locked inside a hotel room, completely cut off from the outside world except for a TV, and drugged with knock-out gas every so often. He eventually learns that during his disappearance, his wife has been killed, and he has been framed as the murderer. Enraged by his predicament, he finds ways to pass the time, writing his memoirs, [[TookALevelInBadass training his fists]], and slowly inching towards his eventual escape.

* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler: Right before Woo-jin commits suicide, we have a TearJerker flashback to when his sister committed suicide. Creator/QuentinTarantino was at a screening of the film, and was shocked to find himself crying for a character who had been completely despicable for the entire prior duration of the movie.]]

-->'''Woo-jin''': [[spoiler:Your tongue got my sister pregnant.]]

-->It's not "Why did Woo-jin imprison me?" It's [[spoiler:"why did he release me"]]?
-->[[spoiler:Can you two do the same?]]
* WhamShot: Dae-su, from behind, through a picture book of some old photos, he comes across pictures of his missing infant daughter. As the pictures progress and she ages up, [[spoiler: she turns out to be none other than his lover Mi-do, much to his horror]].

* GambitRoulette: [[spoiler: Woo-jin's plan. In fact, he spends part of the final act genuinely annoyed that it went so well, chiding Dae-su for walking right into an obvious trap by leaving Mido with his previous captor Park.]]

Oh Dae-su is an alcoholic businessman with a wife and daughter who is released by the police after a night of drunken misconduct, and then is abruptly kidnapped without a trace. Locked inside a hotel room, completely cut off from the outside world except for a TV, and drugged with knock-out gas every so often, he eventually learns that during his disappearance his wife has been killed, and he has been framed as the murderer. Enraged by his predicament, he finds ways to pass the time, writing his memoirs, [[TookALevelInBadass training his fists]] and slowly inching towards his eventual escape.

But days before his long-awaited breakout fifteen years later, he is just as mysteriously released, with nice clothes, money, a cell phone, a severely weakened psyche, a fugitive status, and a million unanswered questions. With the help of a female Japanese chef named Mi-do and one of his old computer-geek friends, No Joo-hwan, he tries to piece together the scattered clues of who took his life away from him, cutting down anyone who gets in his path.

An [[Film/{{Oldboy2013}} English-language remake]] was released on November 27, 2013, directed by Creator/SpikeLee and starring Creator/JoshBrolin, Creator/ElizabethOlsen, Creator/SharltoCopley, Creator/MichaelImperioli, Creator/SamuelLJackson, Creator/PomKlementieff and Creator/RamiMalek.

* FiveFiveFive: Averted, as the address - both the street number and PO box - to Dae-su's daughter's foster parents in reality belongs to [[http://www.amaranten.se a hotel in Stockholm]].

* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler: Right before Woo-jin commits suicide, we have a TearJerker flashback of when his sister committed suicide. Creator/QuentinTarantino was at a screening of the film and was shocked to find himself crying for a character who had been completely despicable for the prior duration of the movie.]]

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:Dae-su is re-hypnotized to erase the truth of Mi-do being his daughter from his memory so that they can live a happy life together. The two embrace, with Dae-su breaking into a smile that slowly turns into a look of pain. The film ends there, leaving whether or not the hypnosis worked, whether or not he was ever hypnotized, and whether or not any of it will be enough to heal Dae-su's mental scars all unknown.]]
* AndIMustScream: Oh Dae-su's predicament for fifteen years.
* AntiHero: Dae-su after his imprisonment suffers from some severe trust issues and is ''brutal'' towards his enemies. He's still overall a sympathetic character, however, which makes what happens to him all the worse.

* BatmanGambit
* BerserkButton: Never call Soo-ah a "slut" in front of Woo-jin, as [[spoiler:Joo-hwan]] learns a ''very'' hard way.

* BoundAndGagged
* BloodlessCarnage: Not ''bloodless'' by any stretch of the imagination, but not nearly as gory as you might expect either. There's no blood at all in the HallwayFight except for a trickle on Oh Dae-Su - the guy who ''won''. A guy getting stabbed [[EyeScream in the eyeball]] is surprisingly clean as well.

* ButForMeItWasTuesday: [[spoiler:An exceedingly rare heroic example: Oh Dae-su accuses Woo-jin of hypnotizing him to forget that he was the initial cause of events that led to Woo-jin's sister's suicide. However:]]

* CentralTheme: VengeanceFeelsEmpty

** [[spoiler:The angel wings for Dae-su's daughter is mentioned at the beginning of the film by Dae-su himself and later on, appears at the film's climax when Mi-do wears it.]]
** The television in the hotel room. [[spoiler:That's how Woo-jin managed to plant the attraction to Mi-Do in Dae-Su's mind.]]
** The scissors in Woo-Jin's apartment. [[spoiler: Dae-Su later uses them to cut his own tongue to appease Woo-Jin.]]
* ChekhovsGunman: [[spoiler: Dae-su's daughter, who is discussed in the prologue and given a few mentions afterwards. Turns out she's actually Mi-do.]]

* CruelTwistEnding: The trope itself isn't a spoiler, as it's par for the course as a Park Chan-Wook film and part of the Vengeance Trilogy.
* CycleOfRevenge: [[spoiler: One the villain fully set up.]]
* CurbStompBattle: Dae-su vs. [[ElevatorActionSequence an elevator full of mooks.]] So incredibly one-sided that [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome we don't even get to see it happen]] - Dae-su just smiles and we cut immediately to him stepping out of the elevator, over the unconscious or dead bodies of the goons he just demolished. And this is ''after'' he just got through an entirely different, equally bruising brawl with a hallway full of guys, and still has a knife sticking out of his back [[MajorInjuryUnderreaction that he barely seems to notice.]]

* DisproportionateRetribution: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Woo-jin appears to present his plan as this, as when he said that his reason for locking up Dae-su for ''fifteen years'' was "Oh Dae-su talks too much." [[spoiler:This ends up not being the case at all, however, because what Oh Dae-su talked too much ''about'' happened to result in Woo-jin's reputation being destroyed and his sister killing herself. Not so disproportionate after all, ay?]]

* DropTheHammer: Dae-su's only weapon in the hallway fight is a claw hammer. Earlier, he uses it to torture Mr. Park, the keeper of the prison.
* ElevatorActionSequence: Subverted. After the ridiculously intense hallway fight, Dae-su makes it to the elevator at the end of the hallway and finds it packed full of reinforcements for the guys he just beat up, who stare at him - and the fallen bodies of their comrades littering the hallway - in disbelief, before Dae-Su smiles and we immediately cut to him exiting the elevator packed with [[CurbStompBattle their unconscious or dead bodies]].
* TheEndingChangesEverything: After TheReveal regarding Woo-jin's motives and [[spoiler: the true nature of Dae-su and Mi-do's relationship]], at least half the film starts to look ''very'' different for viewers on subsequent watches. The actual ending also plays a part as [[spoiler:Dae-su's painful smile]] can lead to different interpretations of what exactly happened in the previous scene.

* EnigmaticMinion: Mr. Han, Woo-jin's silent bodyguard. [[spoiler: He gets one line in the whole movie and almost kills Dae-Su before getting shot in the head by his employer.]]

* EveryoneWentToSchoolTogether: Dae-su with Joo-hwan, Woo-jin and [[spoiler:his sister, Soo-ah.]]

* FaceDeathWithDignity: Subverted. [[spoiler: Woo-jin takes a hot shower and puts on his best suit before going into the lift to calmly commit suicide. But he cries during his memories about Soo-ah, his deceased sister, before shooting himself.]]

* FauxAffablyEvil: Woo-jin might be pretty charming, but that demeanor actually hides his vengeful self.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: When Mr Han gives Park a box full of cash, Park smiles fondly at his hand and adjusts his pinky ring. [[spoiler: A subtle hint that he willingly gives up his hand as part of Woo-Jin's plan.]]
** When Dae-Su and Mi-Do meet for the first time, they note that the other looks somewhat familiar. [[spoiler: They should - they are father and daughter.]]

* GainaxEnding: It's hard to tell what's real and what's not after [[spoiler:Woo-jin's suicide]].

* GoMadFromTheIsolation: Dae-su is left completely broken by over a decade locked inside a small hotel room.

** Dae-su, after learning he has been framed for the murder of his wife.

* GoryDiscretionShot: Two merciful occurrences: When Dae-su rips out Mr Park's teeth with the fork of a hammer, [[spoiler: and when he cuts his own tongue out.]]

* HallwayFight: In what is arguably the film's most well-known scene, Oh Dae-Su fights his way through a long hallway of mooks, armed with a hammer, for around [[TheOner three uninterrupted minutes]].
* HeKnowsTooMuch: Not only was Dae-su locked up by Woo-jin for [[spoiler:spreading the rumors about his sister, Soo-ah, being a slut]], but [[spoiler:he also had his friend, Joo-hwan, who was one of the people responsible for said rumor, killed by Woo-jin.]]
* HereditarySuicide: An unusual variation by the way of TogetherInDeath due to the role of BrotherSisterIncest. Soo-ah commits suicide by jumping off a bridge after she believes that she's pregnant with (her brother) Woo-jin's baby. After Woo-jin exacts his revenge on Dae-su decades later, he shoots himself.

* IncestantAdmirer: [[spoiler: After learning the horrid truth that his lover Mi-do is his long-lost daughter, Dae-su gets his memory of the revelation wiped just so he can move on and continue to date his child (perhaps). Dae-su knew the truth but Mi-Do didn't.]]

* InformedSelfDiagnosis

-->'''Oh Dae-su''': Can the imaginary training of fifteen years be put to use? [successfully defeats several thugs] ''Apparently, it can.''\\
[later]\\
'''Oh Dae-su''': Can the imaginary training of fifteen years be put to use? [fought off by a helpless young woman] ''No. It can't.''

* KickTheSonOfABitch: [[spoiler:Joo-hwan]] callously gossips about Soo-ah's death, calling her a slut and wondering if he should have gotten in on that in high school. Not a pleasant thing to say about a dead girl, but it really hits an overhearing [[spoiler:Woo-jin]] hard on a personal level and is one of the very few times that someone cracks through the controlled scenario he spent so many long years constructing.
* KillEmAll: Surprisingly averted in this {{Revenge}} story. Of the six named characters [[spoiler: both of the leads survive, albeit one not exactly intact, as does a secondary villain.]]
* LostInTranslation: Played in two ways. When Oh Dae-Su is released from his prison, he talks to the gang of kids and they act like they don't understand him. The movie was set in a time period when the Korean language had drastically changed over those fifteen years and Oh Dae-Su is speaking a very different dialect than the modern one. Unfortunately, this was lost in the English subtitles.

* MadeOfIron: Dae-su. The man spends years punching a wall until his joints and calluses make his hands into virtual knuckledusters, but that's the least of it. Stabbed, stomped on, and beaten with sticks, it all only serves to make him get up and continue pummeling his way through that hallway.
* ManicPixieDreamGirl: [[spoiler:Subverted. Mi-do appears to be one in the beginning, but it later turns out she has similarly been hypnotized.]]

-->[[spoiler:'''Suicidal Man/Dae-Su''': ''Even though I'm no better than a beast, don't I have the right to live?]]''\\

* MeaningfulName: Park Chan-wook claims that the leading character's name, Oh Dae-Su, [[spoiler:is derived from Theatre/{{Oedipus|TheKing}}.]]
* MeaninglessVillainVictory: Woo-jin. [[spoiler:He gets the revenge he sought for so long, only to realize that it won't bring his sister back and now his life has no purpose. Cue Woo-jin killing himself.]]

* MookChivalry: DoubleSubverted, Cheol-woong's gang initially fights Oh Dae-su together as a group. The problem they face is that [[{{Determinator}} he just won't stay down.]] The more they throw themselves at him, the more he bashes their heads in with his hammer. Eventually, they become so tired and beaten down, they become reluctant to actually continue fighting him, leading to them trying to fight him one at a time.
* MookHorrorShow: Also DoubleSubverted. While Dae-Su demolishes the guys in the hallway at first, eventually they overpower him with [[ZergRush sheer force of numbers]], and he's pushed to exhaustion, beaten down, and eventually knocked down and stabbed. This makes it all the more terrifying for the guys in the hallway when he [[OhCrap stands back up]] and starts kicking ass again. When he gets to the elevator at the end of the hallway and finds it full of mooks, all we see is him giving a sly grin before a SmashCut to him stepping out of the elevator...and over the unconscious or dead bodies of the guys he's just slaughtered.
* MutilationInterrogation: Oh Dae-su tracks down the illegal holding facility where he was kept for 15 years after being kidnapped off the streets. Dae-su asks the warden who it was that paid him to keep Dae-su imprisoned, and when the warden doesn't answer he duct tapes him to his chair. He then uses his claw hammer to pry out the man's teeth one at a time, telling him that he owes him one tooth for each year of his life that was stolen from him. After about 7 or so, he gives the warden a chance to talk, with the implication that he'll continue through with all 15 if he doesn't.
* NearRapeExperience: Interestingly, PlayedForLaughs.
* NemesisMagnet: Oh Dae-Su has to deal with being this not long after being released from his 15 year imprisonment. All because of [[spoiler: a rumor he spread about Woo-Jin and his sister years ago]].
* NoAnimalsWereHarmed: ''Very'' averted. Four real octopuses were used for the eating scene. (Choi Min-sik, a Buddhist in real life, gave a prayer before eating each one.) On the other hand, PlayedStraight as the man who jumps to his death holding a dog near the beginning is holding a [[SpecialEffectsFailure rather obvious dummy]] when he lands.
* OneManArmy: Dae-su beats down over a dozen men, and then immediately deals with another six or seven without being much worse for wear aside from being beaten and featuring some blood on his head...oh and, you know, a knife wound in the back.

* ThePenance: [[spoiler:Dae-su cuts out his tongue to atone for unwittingly causing Woo-Jin's sister to [[DrivenToSuicide commit suicide]]]].
* PetTheDog: Right before the famous HallwayFight, Dae-su has taken one of the bad guys hostage with a knife across his throat, but tells the others his blood type and deliberately lets him go so two of them can take their wounded comrade away, before the others rush him.

* ThePlace: Sort of. The film's title is a reference to the Catholic high school that the protagonist attended as a student.
* PosthumousVillainVictory: [[spoiler: Woo-Jin dies from suicide but he succeeds in getting some revenge by ultimately tricking Old Dae-Su into falling in love with his long-lost daughter and driving him psychologically mad.]]
* PragmaticVillainy: Mr. Park and the goons that Oh Dae-su beat up hunt him down for revenge. Just as they're about to torture him, Woo-Jin calls them to back off and Mr. Han shows up to give them a lot of money. Mr. Park is content with the pay off and leaves, though he does whack Oh Dae-su on the head with a bat once.
* PsychologicalHorror
* PsychopathicManChild: [[spoiler:After acting cool and collected for the entire movie prior, Woo-jin shows hints of this as he reveals the truth to Dae-su.]]
* PunchAWall: A large part of Oh Dae-su's self-training.

* SacrificialLion: [[spoiler: Joo-Hwan, Dae-su's best friend, is murdered by Woo-Jin after revealing the source of Woo-jin's motivations due to [[BerserkButton calling his sister a whore]]. Dae-su takes his death quite badly.]]

* PyrrhicVictory: [[spoiler: Woo-jin, after being successful in his elaborated revenge, realizes that he has nothing else to live for and has failed to let go of the trauma of his sister's death, and commits suicide.]]

** To ''Film/BrideOfFrankenstein'' which is briefly shown on the TV of Dae-su's prison hab.
** To ''Theatre/TitusAndronicus'' including the scene [[spoiler:with the tongue]].

** On the wall of Mi-do's bedroom there's a picture of ''Film/KingKong1933''.
** A reference to ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'' is also made early on. Pointedly, this bears obvious parallels to Dae-su's situation.

* StalkerWithoutACrush: [[spoiler: Woo-jin, towards Dae-su and Mi-do.]]
* SuicideNotMurder: [[spoiler:Double subverted. It looks like Soo-ah committed suicide after the rumors start circulating, but when Dae-su is at Woo-jin's penthouse, he finds a picture of her taken at the dam where she died and it's implied that Woo-jin killed her to cover up their incestuous relationship during her phantom pregnancy, making it look like a suicide. In the end it's revealed that Woo-jin was trying to ''stop'' Soo-ah from committing suicide but she convinced him to let go of her.]]

* TokenRomance: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in the case of Oh Dae-su and Mi-do, since [[spoiler: it's part of the villain's revenge scheme.]]

* TookALevelInBadass: Deconstructed too. Fifteen years in a private prison have turned Dae-su into a fearless killing machine, but all of this seems to fit into the villain's plan.

* TheWorfEffect: Dae-su after his imprisonment is ''good'' at fighting, but he's a OneManArmy because the people he fights are hired thugs. When he goes up against Mr Han, a trained bodyguard, he does much worse, and only wins by sheer luck.
* {{Tragedy}}: One of the most harrowing ones in film history. Fittingly, [[spoiler: the story is patterned on Oedipus, one of the best known Greek tragedies.]]
* TragicVillain: Woo-jin is one of the best examples in cinema. [[spoiler:Through the course of the movie he murders people, imprisons a man for 15 years, tortures him and tricks him into sleeping with his daughter, all for starting a rumor. But when the film flashes back to Woo-jin on the bridge, desperately holding on to his sister as she hangs over the water, you realize that he is ultimately a broken man who needed an excuse, no matter how flimsy, to go on as once he got his revenge he promptly committed suicide.]]
* TraumaCongaLine: The ending is this in trumps: [[spoiler:Dae-Su learns that, by gossiping about their incestuous relationship, he indirectly caused Woo-Jin's sister to commit suicide; Woo-Jin reveals Mi-Do is Dae-Su's daughter, and they had sex because he orchestrated it; Dae-Su is pummelled by Mr. Han for trying to kill Woo-Jin; Dae-Su cuts his tongue out in a desperate attempt to stop Woo-Jin from telling Mi-Do; Woo-Jin commits suicide, denying Dae-Su his revenge; and finally, Dae-Su gets re-hypnotized to forget everything, although it's unclear if it works, and he's last seen still with Mi-Do.]] Considering that this all happened ''after'' he was imprisoned for fifteen years and his wife was murdered...
* {{Ubermensch}}: Oh Dae-su takes on many aspects of an Ubermensch during his imprisonment. [[spoiler: Ultimately his character is a massive subversion. Everything he does has been accounted for. He has no control of his own fate and plays into Lee Woo-jin's hands. By the end of the movie he is a very, very broken man.]]
* UglyGuyHotWife: Oh Dae-su and Mi-do. [[spoiler:They are both this and TheUglyGuysHotDaughter due to ParentalIncest. Justified since Woo-jin hypnotized them into falling in love with each other.]]
* UnreliableNarrator: This is [[DownplayedTrope downplayed]] in the case of [[spoiler:Dae-su as his narration of events is trustworthy until the ending in which he meets the hypnotist. As the film points out, there is only one set of footprints in the snow, meaning that the meeting between the hypnotist and him, along with the later LaserGuidedAmnesia he underwent, may not have happened.]]
* UnskilledButStrong: Oh Dae-Su's self taught fighting style is crude and based largely around brute strength and the InvulnerableKnuckles he cultivated for fifteen years. While it proves extremely effective against street thugs and a large crowd of {{Mooks}}, he gets [[CurbStompBattle thoroughly trounced]] by the more skilled [[TheDragon Mister Han]].
* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler:Mi-do, and to a lesser extent Oh Dae-Su.]]
* VengeanceFeelsEmpty: This is, rather explicitly, the entire point of the film. [[spoiler:After destroying Dae-Su, Woo-jin states he has nothing to live for now that he's had his vengeance. He briefly feels joy over exacting his revenge but moments later he returns to being an empty shell mourning the loss of his sister. So after successfully completing his massive, 15 year BatmanGambit, cue Woo-jin blowing his brains out in an elevator.]]
* VictoryIsBoring: See VengeanceFeelsEmpty. [[spoiler:His revenge plot against Dae-Su was all he had to live for, and he commits suicide once it's done.]]

* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Woo-jin before his suicide.]]
* VillainousIncest: Inverted interestingly. [[spoiler:Oh-Dae-Su and Mi-Do are a subversion, as they genuinely had no idea, but the villain, Woo-jin, was in a sexual relationship with his sister. However, this is portrayed as happy and equal, and her [[DrivenToSuicide suicide]] gets him on his StartOfDarkness.]]

** After being kidnapped and locked in the hotel room, Dae-Su hears the television broadcast saying that his wife has been brutally murdered...[[FromBadToWorse and his DNA was found at the crime scene.]] And that's within the first fifth of the movie.

-->It's not "Why did Woo-Jin imprison me? It's [[spoiler:why did he release me]]?

* WhamShot: As Dae-Su behind looking through a picture book of some old photos, he comes across pictures of his missing infant daughter. Which as the pictures progress and she ages up, [[spoiler: turns out to be none other than his lover Mi-Do, much to his horror]].

** [[spoiler: Regardless of if it was unintentional, Oh Dae-Su drove Soo-ah to suicide by gossiping about her incestuous relationship with her brother.]] Downplayed in that he pays ''heavily'' for it.
** At the beginning of the movie, Oh Dae-su leaves a suicidal man alone on the rooftop after telling him his story, walking away when the suicidal man tries to tell Oh Dae-su why he wanted to kill himself. The film shows the man committing suicide moments later.
* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: Dae-Su fights off several nooks near the elevator with only a hammer.

''Oldboy'' is a 2003 South Korean action thriller film very loosely based on [[Manga/{{Oldboy}} the Japanese manga of the same name]]. It is the second and most well-known installment of [[Creator/ParkChanWook Park Chan-wook]]'s "Vengeance Trilogy", which begins with ''Film/SympathyForMrVengeance'' and ends with ''Film/SympathyForLadyVengeance''. The film also has several parallels to ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'', as well as {{Shout Out}}s to ''Theatre/TitusAndronicus'' and ''Theatre/OedipusTheKing''.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/oldboy.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350: "I'm here to put up shelves and kick ass..."]]

''Oldboy'' is a South Korean movie very loosely based on [[Manga/{{Oldboy}} the Japanese manga of the same name]], and is the second and most well-known installment of [[Creator/ParkChanWook Park Chan-wook's]] "Vengeance Trilogy", which begins with ''Film/SympathyForMrVengeance'' and ends with ''Film/SympathyForLadyVengeance''. The film also has several parallels to ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'', as well as {{Shout Out}}s to ''Theatre/TitusAndronicus'' and ''Theatre/OedipusTheKing''.

'''Since this is a movie that has some major twists and surprises,''' '''''watch out for spoilers.'''''

* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler: Right before Woo-jin commits suicide, we have a TearJerker flashback of when his sister committed suicide. Creator/QuentinTarantino was at the screening and was shocked to find himself crying for a character who had been completely despicable for the prior duration of the movie.]]

* IncestantAdmirer: [[spoiler: After learning the horrid truth that his lover Mi-do is his long-lost daughter, Dae-su gets his memory of the revelation wiped just so he can move on and continue to date his child. Dae-su knew the truth but Mi-Do didn't.]]

* FamousLastWords: [[spoiler: Woo-Jin to Dae-Su before killing himself]].
-->'''[[spoiler:Woo-jin]]:''' My sister and I loved each other, despite everything. Can you two do the same?

* MookHorrorShow: Also DoubleSubverted. While Dae-Su demolishes the guys in the hallway at first, eventually they overpower him with [[ZergRush sheer force of numbers]], and [[RealityEnsues he's pushed to exhaustion, beaten down, and eventually knocked down and stabbed.]] This makes it all the more terrifying for the guys in the hallway when he [[OhCrap stands back up]] and starts kicking ass again. When he gets to the elevator at the end of the hallway and finds it full of mooks, all we see is him giving a sly grin before a SmashCut to him stepping out of the elevator...and over the unconscious or dead bodies of the guys he's just slaughtered.

* RealityEnsues: Dae-su after his imprisonment is ''good'' at fighting, but he's a OneManArmy because the people he fights are hired thugs. When he goes up against Mr Han, a trained bodyguard, he does much worse, and only wins by sheer luck.

* AdaptationLocationChange: The original manga was set in Japan. The film moves the setting to South Korea.

But days before his long-awaited breakout fifteen years later, he is just as mysteriously released, with nice clothes, money, a cell phone, a severely weakened psyche, a fugitive status, and a million unanswered questions. With the help of a female Japanese chef named Mido and one of his old computer-geek friends, No Joo-hwan, he tries to piece together the scattered clues of who took his life away from him, cutting down anyone who gets in his path.

* AdaptationNameChange: Since the film is set in South Korea instead of Japan, every character's name is changed to sound more Korean (with the exception of the Japanese Mido).

But days before his long-awaited breakout fifteen years later, he is just as mysteriously released, with nice clothes, money, a cell phone, a severely weakened psyche, a fugitive status, and a million unanswered questions. With the help of a female Japanese chef named Mi-do and one of his old computer-geek friends, No Joo-hwan, he tries to piece together the scattered clues of who took his life away from him, cutting down anyone who gets in his path.

* AdaptationNameChange: Since the film is set in South Korea instead of Japan, every character's name is changed to sound more Korean (with the exception of the Japanese Mi-do).

But days before his long-awaited breakout fifteen years later, he is just as mysteriously released, with nice clothes, money, a cell phone, a severely weakened psyche, a fugitive status and a million unanswered questions. With the help of a female Japanese chef named Mi-do and one of his old computer-geek friends, No Joo-hwan, he tries to piece together the scattered clues of who took his life away from him, cutting down anyone who gets in his path.

An [[Film/{{Oldboy2013}} English-language remake]] was released on November 27, 2013, directed by Creator/SpikeLee and starring Creator/JoshBrolin, Creator/ElizabethOlsen, Sharlto Copley, and Creator/SamuelLJackson.

An [[Film/{{Oldboy2013}} English-language remake]] was released on November 27, 2013, directed by Creator/SpikeLee and starring Creator/JoshBrolin, Creator/ElizabethOlsen, Creator/SamuelLJackson and Sharlto Copley.

An [[Film/{{Oldboy2013}} English-language remake]] was released on November 27, 2013, directed by Creator/SpikeLee and starring Creator/JoshBrolin, Creator/ElizabethOlsen, Creator/SamuelLJacksonand Sharlto Copley.

An [[Film/{{Oldboy2013}} English-language remake]] was released on November 27, 2013, directed by Creator/SpikeLee and starring Creator/JoshBrolin, Creator/ElizabethOlsen, and Sharlto Copley.

* AdaptationNameChange: Since the film is set in South Korea instead of Japan, every character's name is changed to sound more Korean.

''Oldboy'' is a South Korean movie very loosely based on [[Manga/{{Oldboy}} the Japanese manga of the same name]], and is the second and most well-known installment of [[Creator/ParkChanWook Park Chan-wook's]] Vengeance Trilogy, which begins with ''Film/SympathyForMrVengeance'' and ends with ''Film/SympathyForLadyVengeance''. The film also has several parallels to ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'', as well as {{Shout Out}}s to ''Theatre/TitusAndronicus'' and ''Theatre/OedipusTheKing''.

* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler: Right before Woo-jin commits suicide, we have a {{tearjerker}} flashback of when his sister committed suicide. Creator/QuentinTarantino was at the screening and was shocked to find himself crying for a character who had been completely despicable for the prior duration of the movie.]]

* SinsOfOurFathers: [[spoiler:Mi-Do gets orphaned, her mother is murdered, and she's unknowingly hypnotised into an incestuous relationship with her presumed-dead father...all for a gossipy comment her father made when he was a teenager.]]

* KickTheSonOfABitch: [[spoiler:Joo-hwan]] callously gossips about Soo-ah's death, calling her a slut and wondering if he should have gotten in on that in high-school. Not a pleasant thing to say about a dead girl, but it really hits an overhearing [[spoiler:Woo-jin]] hard on a personal level and is one of the very few times that someone cracks through the controlled scenario he spent so many long years constructing.

* {{Tragedy}}: One of the most harrowing ones in film history. Fittingly, [[spoiler: the story is patterned on Oedipus, one of the best known Greek Tragedies.]]

* NoAnimalsWereHarmed: ''Very'' averted. Four real octopuses were used for the eating scene. (Choi Min-sik, a Buddhist in real life, gave a prayer before eating each one.) On the other hand, PlayedStraight as the man who jumps to his death holding a dog near the beginning is holding a rather obvious dummy when he lands.

** On the wall of Mi-Do's bedroom there's a picture of ''Film/KingKong1933''.