by SARAH ROWLAND

You're probably not going to want to gorge on a plate of sushi before feasting your eyes on Oldboy. Nor will you find yourself rushing out to make a dental appointment after sitting through Park Chanwook's ultra-violent suspense thriller.

The gritty South Korean bloodbath, which was awarded top prize by the Tarantino-headed 2004 Cannes jury, follows kidnap victim Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) on his road to revenge. After being held captive in a secret location for 15 years for reasons unknown, the middle-aged family man is set free, only to be imprisoned by his new life as a fugitive. While watching endless hours of TV in his make-shift prison, Dae-su learned that someone with a huge hate-on for him killed his wife and framed him for the crime. Now his all-knowing tormentor Woo-jin (Yu Ji-tae), who has an endless supply of cash to spend on elaborately choreographed forms of psychological torture, has roped him into a score-settling game of cat and mouse. Dae-su must guess who and why he was targeted by a predetermined deadline. Failure to do so will lead to more deaths.

But before the emotionally fried pawn starts his investigation, he heads to the local sushi bar. It turns out the diet of freezer-burned dumplings he endured in solitary confinement has left him with one hell of a craving for anything with a pulse. Without the aid of soy sauce or wasabi, our dishevelled hero sinks his teeth into the head of a live and writhing squid, prior to embarking on a city-wide taste-test in search of the source of those aforementioned dumplings. Remarkably, this toxic side-venture leads him to the hired goons who held him captive. In an oral torture scene that rivals John Schlesinger's Marathon Man, Dae-su then uses the back of a hammer to extract some info about who was really behind his abduction.

Despite the implausible plot and sometimes overly creative brutality, Park, who rose to fame in his native land with the commercial success of his 2000 military thriller Joint Security Area, maintains the nervous tension till the very end. Dae-su is hardly a sympathetic protagonist, though his abuse is so complete that we actually care. Contemplating his life and those he's done wrong, Dae-su fills several notebooks with the names of possible enemies. Not that he's any closer to narrowing down the culprit - and neither are we.

This sadistic Hitchcockian mystery is not without its flaws, though - most notably the melodramatic soundtrack and the obvious generational gap between Dae-su and Woo-jin, who are supposed to be the same age - (although this could be attributed to the fact that long-term incarceration is murder on your complexion).

However, these are fairly insignificant complaints stacked up against Choi's phenomenal performance, especially when he is crawling around on all fours, offering to become Woo-jin's dog in exchange for his estranged daughter's life. And of course, there's one last act of gruesome mutilation that will probably give Tarantino wet dreams for the rest of his life. Finally, kudos must go to Park for including an ending that will no-doubt be altered if American producers get their grubby little mitts on the rights.

Oldboy opens at Cinéma du Parc Friday, April 22

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