The Oldboy Effect

Just as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction gave rise to a slew of PoMo indie action-comedies with characters dropping pop-culture references every four minutes, there are now South Korean directors doing their damnedest to duplicate what Park Chan-wook did last year with Oldboy, the powerful, stylish neo-noir that appealed both to art house crowds (it won the Grand Prix at Cannes) as well as the average moviegoer. The first contender is A Bittersweet Life, a film that very badly wants to be deemed "this year's Oldboy". The success of Oldboy cannot be reduced to a single element. It's that rarest of things -- a film where everything falls perfectly into place -- the acting, writing, directing, design, music, etc. Kim Ji-woon, no stranger himself to highly-stylized production design (the wonderful The Quiet Family and the pretty-good A Tale of Two Sisters) tries a bit too hard to inject some of that Park Chan-wook magic into A Bittersweet Life, but no visual or audible trickery can hide the fact that the film is little more than a well made but tiresomely familiar violent gangster flick. Lee Byung-hun plays Sun-woo, an impeccably dressed gangster who appreciates the finer things in life, yet is an emotional shut-in. Fitted in an expensive tailor-made suit, he can calmly enjoy a delicate chocolate soufflé and moments later dish out a beating to some young thugs who are disrespecting the bar in the hotel he manages. A dedicated servant to Boss Kang, Sun-woo finds himself in the somewhat hackneyed position of being charged with looking after his boss's young mistress, Hee-soo (Shin Min-a), with orders to kill her if she is unfaithful. Though the "falling for the boss's girl" device has been around since Josef von Sternberg's Underworld (1927), Kim does manage to put a somewhat unique spin on it, but it's not enough to elevate the film from standard gangster-noir fare. The emotionally closeted gangster who discovers he has a heart after all is itself a character we've seen countless times before, and there's nothing particularly original or interesting about Sun-woo to make us care all that much -- there's hardly a trace of complexity about him. The violent scenes (of which there are many) strive to outdo themselves in creativity, and Kim seems interested in coming up with new and unique ways to kill a man (including the scraping of a head against a concrete wall). Sun-woo is virtually unstoppable -- whether a knife in the gut or a bullet in the head, they're all merely flesh wounds for our tragic hero. Unfortunately, the scenes that find Sun-woo battling a mob of thugs are lacking the comic (or even absurd) nature of the epic hammer fight scene in Oldboy (not to mention the stunning choreography), and what we are left with is a generic one-against-the-multitude fight scene. The Oldboy influence on A Bittersweet Life is undeniable. Besides a few common cast members, Kim hired Ryu Seong-hie, the art director on Oldboy to act as production designer, and though there are some sequences that are reminiscent of Park's film, the overall look of A Bittersweet Life lacks the exaggerated sense of unreality Ryu created for Oldboy. In fact, the level of detail found in Kim's earlier films (think of the house in A Tale of Two Sisters) just isn't present here. The soundtrack, at times, takes its cue from Oldboy, including a sweeping waltz that plays during the film's climactic moment. (Though unlike Oldboy, the waltz isn't an integral part of the story.) Then there is the strangest link of all between the two -- the nemesis in both films wears a floppy Gilligan hat. Go figure. A Bittersweet Life isn't a bad film at all, but it does pour on the drama a bit thick. Sun-woo just isn't an interesting enough character, yet the film attempts to evoke a sense of pathos. Whereas the tragedy in Oldboy was almost operatic, Sun-woo is more a victim of circumstance, rather than an individual cast into a hell of his own making. Though repeated viewings have revealed some details missed the first time round, A Bittersweet Life still leaves Filmbrain feeling cold -- there's simply nothing to latch on to.

Comments

[Josh]

Couldn't this arguably be considered a Miike Effect? To me, Oldboy just felt like the Boondock Saints to Dead or Alive's Reservoir Dogs or Ichi the Killer's Pulp Fiction. Though I didn't like Oldboy to begin with, and I haven't seen this movie, so...

[Filmbrain]

I see vast differences between Miike and Park. Park's interest in revenge is very much his own, in my opinion, and shares little with the hyper-kineticism of the Dead or Alive trilogy. Don't get me wrong -- I'm a Miike fan as well, but I don't believe Miike had a huge (if any) influence on Park.

[Sarmoung]

I'm intrigued, but more excited by the prospect of Park's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance or whatever they end up calling it outside of Korea. I think it's just out and I hope it makes it to London in time for the film festival in the autumn. If not, I'll be in Seoul in November anyway.

I still find myself thinking of Miike as Japan's Fassbinder. A thought that really doesn't stand up to much scrutiny beyond prolific output! Although a double bill of Gozu with Satan's Brew would work well.

[Filmbrain]

I too am excited about the third film in Park's revenge trilogy. Everything I've read about it so far has been positive, though it's meant to be quite different from Oldboy in its narrative pacing.

[andrew]

Yeah, the only thing Miike and Park have in common in my view is that they are both Asians making movies with violent action scenes. Saw Bittersweet recently and thought it was ok but nothing special but really liked the supporting cast.

[msic]

It would make sense that LADY is slower than OLDBOY. One of the things that's so impressive about MR. VENGEANCE (which I think is a much better film that OLDBOY) is the way it combines ultra-violence with a lugubrious pace, really drawing the audience in and asking us to sit with the tragic consequences of these violent acts. I would expect that the weight of the events in MR. VENGEANCE would make LADY VENGEANCE an even more downcast film.

[MadP]

Comparing OldBoy and A Bittersweet life is what is tiresome, dull and boring... Any violent Korean film that preceded Oldboy was going to be compared to it. If Die Bad was released after Oldboy comparisons would be made.

These are two VERY different films and should be treated as such. A few common cast members and an art director are far from undeniable influences.

Although I could talk for hours about how they are different, it's a waste of time to compare/contrast OldBoy and Bittersweet life and explain how they're not even close to similiar films.

[Filmbrain]

MadP - I don't think this is a simple case of "violent movie, therefore automatic comparison to Oldboy". The similarities between the two go well beyond the fact that they are both violent.

I agree with you -- the two films are different, but I can't help but think Kim allowed the critical praise and success of Oldboy to influence his directorial choices somewhat.

Regardless, even without the comparison, I still find A Bittersweet Life dramatically thin.

[MadP]

To support my arguement... Bittersweet Life was the first violent film to come out after OldBoy and I feel that critics were waiting for the "follow up" to the violence...

Bittersweet life IS dramatically thin which is one of the BIGGEST differences. The story is simple, and the pacing was a lot slower. If it was TRYING to be OldBoy one of the things they would've done was to speed up the pace. It's not very hard to do!

OldBoy was a very surreal and visually compelling. A Bittersweet Life wasn't! All the sets were very down to earth and ordinary. Take the last scene of BSL and compare to Oldboy. Lavish sets were not there, ie no swimming pool canals and such in BSL.

The reason I have a problem with this review, is because it's NOT a review.
A novice film critic (at best) is doing a comparison between the last great violent film and the new violent film. If that critic is looking to improve, take a film for what it is and review that film. Don't make your review headline the equivent of "The OldBoy influence and the copy cat films that are following."

It's very ingenious and amateurish.

[win]

我觉得很多地方相似，从电影语言的角度讲，就是抄袭嘛

[nkw88]

Before JSA, PARK Chan-Wook published the book of his film criticisms.
It is "The Discrete Charm of Watching Cinema" which is filled
with very unique view and perspective about many films.

The impressive one is his review of Sergio Leone's .
In his review, Park interprets this Western film as the primitive accumulation of capital in North America in Marxist term.

That is, film noir, Western, and classical Hong Kong Wuxia pian are the main resource of Park's
film, which can be compared with Tarantino's film world.

But a difference is Park's undergraduate major,
philosophy, and his experience of student
activism, I guess. Those experience and sensibility are related to his social engagement
and commentary in his film, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Old Boy.

When I heard his make of Lady Vengeance, it may
be compared to , which is also
related to Tarantino's .

Let's find what's different and similar.

[fagboy]

"PoMo"????? OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD!