Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004, “Old Boy” by Park Chan-wook will leave the catalog of the Amazon Prime Video platform on May 21.
From Death Note to Ghost in the Shell, without forgetting the infamous Dragonball Evolution, the screen transpositions of Japanese works are generally synonymous with disappointment in the eyes of fans, and even the general public. One film, however, was able to ward off the curse: Park Chan-wook’s Old Boy.
Presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004, the South Korean feature film left the Croisette with the Grand Prix from the jury chaired that year by a certain Quentin Tarantino; the latter had also campaigned for the Palme to be awarded to the film, an opinion which had not been shared by his jurors since it was ultimately the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 which won the main prize at the Festival.
old boy is the adaptation of the eponymous manga by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya (available in 4 volumes from naBan editions). Although it is a free adaptation, the film follows the same plot as the original Japanese work: a man finds freedom after being locked up for several years for a reason he does not know.
Beyond a simple adaptation, Park Chan-wook’s film took enormous liberties with the manga’s narrative, changing the main character’s personality, the antagonist’s motive as well as the outcome of the plot. Darker, but also more violent, the feature film is among the most emblematic works of the new wave of South Korean cinema that appeared in the early 2000s.
Want to (re) see this electro-shock, generally presented as the best film adaptation of a manga? So don’t delay, since old boy will definitely leave the catalog of the Amazon Prime Video platform on May 21!