The film opens with a man holding another man over a building ledge by his tie. The man holding the other man is asked his name after he says that he wants to tell a story. The man is Oh Dae-su - a Korean businessman, husband and father. The scene flashes back to an overweight Dae-su as he sits drunkenly in a local police station while his friend, Joo-Hwan, bails him out. After Dae-su calls and talks to his daughter Yeun-Hee from a public phone, Joo-Hwan takes the phone to reassure Dae-su's wife of his imminent return. After hanging up, Joo-Hwan turns around and discovers Dae-su is now missing. Days later, Dae-su awakens confined in a shabby hotel room, with no explanation of where he is or why he is there. He is not allowed visitors, nor phone calls, and is fed only fried dumplings through a narrow slot. Experiencing hysteria and hallucinations during his captivity, he frequently attempts suicide but is often gassed into unconsciousness. Dae-su, resigned to his fate, keeps himself occupied with shadowboxing and recording his captivity with tattoos, using a television as his calendar as he describes it. He trains for fighting by punching an outline of a man painted on the wall. While watching television, Dae-su discovers that his wife has been murdered, his daughter sent to foster parents and that he himself is the prime murder suspect. Dae-su makes plans to escape, and begins to tunnel through the wall. Close to the realization of his plan, Dae-su is set free on the rooftop of a building with a new suit of clothes and his prison diaries, fifteen years after his imprisonment began. Upon his release, Dae-su meets the man attempting to commit suicide by jumping off the edge. Saving the man seconds before he falls, Dae-su tells him his story up to this point.
As the man starts his own tale, Dae-su gives up interest and wanders off, mugging a woman for her sunglasses. As the woman attempts to get help from a policeman, the jumper falls onto a car in the building's courtyard, allowing Dae-su to escape. While wandering the streets of the city, Dae-su meets Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), a sushi chef at a local restaurant, who takes pity on him when he passes out and brings him to her home. Receiving a phone call from his still unidentified former captor, Dae-su resolves to find him and locates the restaurant that provided the fried dumplings during his imprisonment, following the delivery boy to his former prison. Once inside, Dae-su ambushes the warden and tortures him for information, which includes tape recordings of his captor, his only spoken motive being that "Oh Dae-su talks too much." Dae-su fights his way out of the prison past hordes of guards, suffering several serious wounds before escaping. Collapsing in the street, a stranger places him in a taxi, only to direct him to Mi-do's address and identify Dae-su by name, showing his face briefly, which Dae-su knows but can't place, before the taxi leaves. The next day, the man, named Woo-jin (Yu Ji-tae) reveals himself as Dae-su's kidnapper and offers Dae-su the chance to play a game, where he must discover Woo-jin's motives behind Dae-su's kidnapping. Mi-do will die if he fails, but if he succeeds, Woo-jin will kill himself. Later, Dae-su discovers he and Woo-jin briefly attended the same high school. During the investigation, Dae-su and Mi-do grow closer together and become physically and emotionally intimate, culminating in their having sex. Chasing his memories, Dae-su remembers spying on Woo-jin's incestuous relationship with his sister, Soo-ah (Yun Jin-seo) and, unaware of their genetic relationship, inadvertently spreads the rumor before transferring to another school in Seoul. Eventually, the rumor grew to include a pregnancy, which may or may not have been real, leading to Soo-ah's death, theoretically a suicide.
Old Boy (Korean Movie 2003)
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