Become a major fan of the Tatran Video/Asia Extreme series and this is another strong entry - the story of Dae-Su Oh(Min-Sik Choi) who is a agressive,drunken business who has made a lot of enemies.....he gets abducted and locked in a room......for the next 15 years......
He is suddenly released into the outside world without any explanation (or reason why he was locked up in the first place).His wife has been murdered(with him as the prime suspect) and his daughter has been fostered in Sweden.
He goes to a sushi bar and takes up with the waitress Mido(Hye-Jeoung Kang) who begins to look after him - he has also recieved a mobile phone and gets a call telling him he has 4 days to work out why was locked up and if he succeeds the captor will kill himself.....if not he will kill Mido.

The scene is thus set for dark secrets from the past to be confronted and consequences faced......to give away more would spoil it but its an incredibly powerful work that is more than a little harrowing at times - Choi is amazing in the part(with a spooky resembelence to Gary Oldman)as he tries to pick apart the Kafka-esque threads and unravel the truth.....a truth that at the end he will regret uncovering.

Its not for the faint-hearted - you find yourself looking away at various points including some dentistry with a claw-hammer and the by now legendary live octopus eating scene which is as barf-inducing as warned - I'm suprised the BBFC left it in.....
I was also suprised to read its getting an American re-make as the violence and subject matter is not the thing that American audiences would normally be able to handle.......along with Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr Vengence this lifts director Chan-Wook Park to real international standing and adds South Korea to another area of exciting and challenging film making.