I am really enjoying the AV Club feature, The New Cult Canon, it seems that the writers have cinematic tastes similar to my own. Here's what they have to say about Old Boy:
Yet there's more to Oldboy than meets the eye. Or at least as much as meets the eye, anyway. It's opera. It's Greek tragedy. Of the films in Park's trilogy, it best expresses the delicious satisfaction of revenge and the hollowness of it, too, as the fulfillment of planning and executing gives way to a devastating hangover once it's accomplished. In Park's view, when men carry revenge in their hearts, there's no room for anything else; where another person might respond to loss through reflection and mourning, a vigilante suffers from tragic, all-consuming myopia. The fact that the grand scheme in Oldboy is so ridiculously elaborate makes it all the more powerful: It would one thing for a wronged man just to stab his foe in a dark alley, but a plan that unfolds over 15-plus years, at absurd expense and intricacy, raises the dramatic stakes considerably. The mood is so heightened that it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
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