Oldboy

Oh Dae-su is abducted, held in a private cell that looks like a cheap hotel room, and released without ever being told who did it or what for. The mystery is not who imprisoned him but why they let him out.

Park Chan-wook made the central film of the Vengeance Trilogy, and it is the one that made Korean cinema a global force: the corridor fight in a single sideways take, the live octopus, and a final revelation that is one of the most devastating in cinema.

It is extremely violent and, more than that, cruel in a designed way: the film is a machine built to inflict a specific realisation, and the last twenty minutes reorganise everything before them.

Choi Min-sik gained and lost weight across the shoot and gives a total performance.

It won the Grand Prix at Cannes under Tarantino's jury. The American remake exists and should be ignored.