Serdar | Genji Press

The drunken man is chained to the wall of the police station, waving a picture of his wife and child, donning the goofy angel wings he bought for his little girl as a birthday gift. His name is Dae-su Oh, which he tells us means “getting along with others” — something he has definitely not been doing, since he was hauled in for groping someone else’s girl and starting a fight. His long-suffering friend, all too used to Dae-su’s philandering, comes to bail him out. Outside, the friend steps into a phone booth to call Dae-su’s wife, and in that moment Dae-su simply vanishes.

He is not dead — instead, we see that Dae-su has been spirited away and locked up in a strange little prison that resembles a grubby hotel room. He has a bed, shower, table, dresser, kitschy art and TV, but no phone and no knob on the door. He has no contact with his captors, who simply open a slot and shove in take-out Chinese food once a day. Every now and then they gas him, change his clothes, cut his hair, and redecorate the room. He will be in this room, as Dae-su tells us on the soundtrack, for the next fifteen years of his life, and will emerge as hardened and fanatically disciplined man bent on revenge.