Oldboy is a South Korean film I've seen on DVD (thanks, Ammo Video!) that requires you to consider this question: If forced to choose between love and revenge, which one would you pick?

And if you live a revenge-driven life, what is left for you when you finally exact it upon your adversary?

Here is an excerpt from the NYT profile of its director:

"Oldboy" follows Dae-su, an appealing sad sack who becomes a determined killer, as he tries to discover the reasons behind his mysterious imprisonment. While he was being held in a dank cell that looked like a parody of a second-rate hotel room, with oppressively patterned wallpaper, orange shag carpet and only a television for company, his wife was murdered by persons unknown and clues were planted pointing to Dae-su. Now the real killer has released him into the world, challenging Dae-su to a perverse game: find me and find out why I locked you up, why I killed your wife, why I hate you so much that I'm willing to devote my life to destroying yours. And who is this "Oldboy" of the title?

Although some critics have dismissed Mr. Park's work, with its often grisly imagery and highly creative violence, as exploitative, few have discounted his filmmaking skills. Here is a director whose control of color and space is stunningly concise; whose storytelling sense is sleek and symmetrical ("Oldboy" leads its hero from one kind of prison to another), whose work with actors is inventive and spontaneous, and whose sophisticated use of subjective images, to channel and challenge the audience's identification with the characters, rivals that of Alfred Hitchcock. Like Hitchcock, Mr. Park can place us inside the head of his protagonist, allowing us to understand his most hideous deeds even as we are morally repulsed by them.

"The reason I want to show shocking things is that they always pose an ethical question," Mr. Park said. "When we are confronted with extreme situations, we forget about moral issues, we simply act and must then accept the consequences. I want to show the moral issues involved in everyday life by heightening them."

I enjoyed the film, but thought it lost a little steam in its last act. But if you like the aesthetic of contemporary Asian cinema, you can't really go wrong with this film.