Park Chan-wook’s Old­boy is return­ing to cinemas

Park Chan-wook has estab­lished him­self as one of Korea’s best and bright­est film­mak­ing tal­ents cur­rent­ly in the game, with a fair argu­ment to be made for any one of his films as his best. Much more straight­for­ward, how­ev­er, would be that Old­boy holds the dis­tinc­tion of being the director’s most popular.

The master’s crossover hit, most notably beloved of Cannes jury pres­i­dent Quentin Taran­ti­no in 2004, will soon return to cin­e­mas in a 4K restora­tion cour­tesy of Arrow Video. That’s right, friends: it is, once again, ham­mer time.

A press release this morn­ing announced that select cin­e­mas to be deter­mined will run the spiffy new Old­boy on 2 August, the per­fect anti­dote to the late-sum­mer cine­plex dol­drums. Bet­ter yet, the 4K ver­sion will get a home release on DVD, Blu-ray, and dig­i­tal down­load for 26 August. Arrow will also release a three-disc ​“Lim­it­ed Edi­tion” Blu-ray, tout­ed as packed with extras, though they’ve yet to be specified.

The vio­lent, extreme saga con­cerns the tor­ment of Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), a man abduct­ed and held against his will in a tacky hotel room for fif­teen years. When he final­ly gains his free­dom, his mono­ma­ni­a­cal mis­sion to find his cap­tors and exact his ret­ri­bu­tion dri­ves him only to more suf­fer­ing, as most sto­ries about revenge ulti­mate­ly go.

For any­one who has yet to bear wit­ness to Park’s leg­endary long-take hall­way fight sequence on the sil­ver screen, these come­back screen­ings rep­re­sent a plum oppor­tu­ni­ty to rec­ti­fy that much. Brace for body blows.

Old­boy returns to cin­e­mas in the UK on 2 August, with a lim­it­ed edi­tion three-disc Blu-ray, DVD and 4K dig­i­tal down­load to fol­low on 26 August.