Reviving Cinematic Brilliance: Oldboy (2003) Korean Thriller Gets Stunning 4K HDR Restoration for 20th Anniversary!

 Reviving Cinematic Brilliance: Oldboy (2003) Korean Thriller Gets Stunning 4K HDR Restoration for 20th Anniversary!

Incase you haven’t heard by now, the 2003 neo-noir action thriller Korean film Oldboy, directed by Park Chan-wook and starring Choi Min-sik has gotten a U.S. 4k HDR restoration by NEON for its 20th anniversary. It premiered for one day only on August 18th in limited theaters.  

For decades the American mainstream was still many years off from recognizing the significance of Korean cinema. In the year 2003 the word was out among critics and film buffs that Korean cinema could be the next exciting new thing in world cinema. Out of nowhere came this cinematic vision - filled with the most brutal hand-to-hand combat, alive octopus eating, and hammers, all being delivered through such a rare shock system that feels completely gone in today’s smartphone era. Oldboy quickly became an instant hit in South Korea and America upon its release. 

No one film, nor even a single art form, can claim responsibility for instigating the phenomenal global growth of Korean pop culture that’s still underway (Bong Joon-ho’s now-classic Memories of Murder also came out in 2003), but it’s hard not to discuss manga, action films, artists, Korean & American culture without even one mention of Oldboy and its impact. Without giving too much of the premise away in case anybody still has yet to witness it, Oldboy is about an old man who finds himself kidnapped and held against his will in a very confined hotel room for 15 years. One day, he is suddenly released from his unusual prison, and sets out on an exceptionally violent and disturbing quest to find the person responsible for keeping him captive for all those years. There's plenty more to it than that, but on the off-chance you've never seen Oldboy, we'll leave the rest for you to discover. A lurid, wretched neo-noir that draws equally from the storytelling aesthetics of Japanese manga and Greek tragedy, Oldboy is anything but a soothing viewing experience. The film is a loose adaptation, by Park and co-writers Hwang Jo-yun and Lim Jun-hyung, of a manga of the same name that ran in Japan from 1996 to 1998.

The newly restored version is nothing but staggering. Fingers crossed that this change in distributor means we’ll be getting a physical release sometime soon. Never would have thought back then that there'd be a 20 Year remastered version of an all time classic heading into theaters from an big indie film distributor and most likely a Criterion release if it follows the same pattern as Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder and Parasite (both released by NEON). Hopefully this way anyone who still hasn't had the pleasure of seeing this film will eventually get their wish. If this becomes true, then cinema is truly back, baby!

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By Danny Manna @Cinemanna24