Based on a Japanese manga by Garon Tsuchiya Nobuaki Minegishi, Park Chan-wook's 2003 film "Oldboy" is a sensational, harrowing, violent, exhilarating opera of sin, retribution, and tragic twists worthy of Shakespeare. Tapping into a particularly Korean sense of social anxiety, it explores experiences of free-floating guilt and the sense that one might be punished at any moment for a slight you didn't know you committed. It's a panic attack of a film that swings for the walls — literally, with a hammer — and thwacks a few skulls in the process. Aggressive, enormous, bloody, and blunt, "Oldboy" may be one of the best films of its decade.

In 2003, Park's film — the second part of what the filmmaker called a Vengeance Trilogy — received a lot of attention. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and dozens of other film awards besides. Quentin Tarantino talked it up immensely, and critics gushed. Joe Morgenstern compared the film to both Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in the Wall Street Journal. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw called it "The Prisoner" by way of Kafka. That the film elicited so many comparisons to classic literature speaks volumes about the ancient, tragic tone of the piece. For a brief period, college dorm rooms boasted posters of "Oldboy."

Neon, the distribution company behind fascinating films like "Colossal," "Parasite," "Portrait of a Lady on Fire," and "Titane," recently secured new North American distribution rights to "Oldboy." In honor of the film's 20th anniversary, Neon has remastered the film and will be releasing it in theaters on August 16, 2023. Mark your calendars.

But Be Warned

For those going for the first time, however, be warned. "Oldboy" is harrowing and violent and stressful to watch. In addition to all the violence perpetrated on other human beings — the one-take hallways fight scene is notorious — the film's main character Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) commits a horrible act of self-mutilation near the film's end. There is also an unsimulated scene wherein Dae-su eats a live octopus. These scenes are shown briefly in the above preview.

The story for "Oldboy" is the stuff of fables. Dae-su, drunk in public in 1988, is snatched off the street by kidnappers and thrown into a locked motel room without explanation. The motel room has a TV and a bed and a slot in the door where he gets food. He is a prisoner. Dae-su is held in that room for 16 years. Then, as abruptly as he was kidnapped, Dae-su is drugged, stuffed in a suitcase, and dropped in an open field. He is told that he has a limited time to discover the identity of his captor and the reason he was imprisoned. He is also keen on finding his wife, whom he was told was murdered, and his daughter, only a child when he was locked up.

Dae-su teams up with a young chef named Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung) and fights through his mania to find the truth. What he finds is, of course, unexpected and terrifying.

"Oldboy" begins like "The Twilight Zone," tips into "Tales from the Crypt," and ends with "Oedipus Rex." It is grand in an older, outsize sense of the word. Seeing it on a big screen will only highlight the film's Shakespearean qualities.

The Remakes

The other two films in the Vengeance Trilogy — 2002's "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and 2005's "Lady Vengeance" — are each as harrowing in their own way, and "Lady Vengeance" in particular ends with a strange revenge quandary that is solved in a horrifying way, but neither reaches the theatrical peaks of "Oldboy." Neither film is connected in terms of story or characters, so each can be taken individually; "Oldboy" requires no homework beforehand.

"Oldboy" was as big a hit as a limited-distribution film could be in 2003, earning just under $15 million worldwide. Still, the film was so massively acclaimed, that it eventually garnered remakes. In 2006, Sanjay Gupta directed a Hindi-language pseudo-remake called "Zinda." As it turns out, the makers of "Zinda" never secured remake rights for "Oldboy," and legal action was considered. No case was brought to court, however, as the "Zinda" studio went out of business. In 2013, Spike Lee directed an English-language remake with Josh Brolin in the Choi Min-sik role. The American remake wasn't terribly well-received, earning a mere 39% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's notable that "Oldboy" is the only Spike Lee film not to be called "A Spike Lee Joint."

If you, dear reader, have ever been curious about the hype that once surrounded this excellent, violent tragedy, the 2023 re-release is an opportunity. "Oldboy" will be presented in 4K digital projection. One must see every fleck of blood in glorious detail.

Read this next: David Fincher's Protagonists Ranked Worst To Best

The post Oldboy is Returning to Theaters for Its 20th Anniversary, and You Must Partake in This Unsettling Masterpiece appeared first on /Film.