Verdict:
You may need to be a right kind of person (or a wrong kind of person) to watch it. It is not going to be for everyone’s tastes, which is all the more surprising considering just how well this movie has been received.
The scenes catch you off guard, with your mental pants down. You think you are about to see something but then it surprises you ahead of time with a close up of something else. And there you sit, with your mouth open wondering what the next scene may bring next or what other camera angle they will invent. You have to remember to breath in between the scenes.
You may have seen graphic movies before, movies that use a lot of gore and yelling. If those movies are like a big electric chainsaw, then Oldboy is more like a scalpel or needle piercing the skin.
Having said that, Oldboy tries a bit too hard. It becomes obvious that it tries to shock you with a new image, thought or a sick twist. It goes a bit over the top in certain parts, breaking a serious and realistic tone with a cartoony comical style, which is not surprising considering its manga roots. It can be either really jarring or really interesting and refreshing, depending on your taste.
Where the movie lost me was at the big reveal in the end. The twist and its tragedy are contrived, immature and unrealistic. These kinds of story points occur more often in Japanese anime.
The music was very interesting and noticeable. There is a fight scene with a minimalistic track of a lonely trumpet and beats. And it totally works, making a scenes take on a wholly different tone than you would expect. A neo-classical melancholy is piercing everything. My only issue is that the soundtrack adds to the over-the-top drama in certain scenes.
If you can stomach its anime twist, Oldboy is a movie that needs to be seen at least once in a lifetime. It was a mind-bending experience and not something I have seen before.