Oldboy was very distracting. Very distracting indeed. I watched a dubbed version on Netflix InstantWatch (without the ability to switch languages or subtitles). The three main male characters were all prominent voice actors, who usually work on dubbing anime for North American release.
The main character Oh Dae-su was dubbed by Michael McConnohie whom I recognized as Emperor Charles Zi Britannia from “Code Geass”, Schwarzwald from “The Big O”, Keiichi Ikari from “Paranoia Agent”, and D from “Vampire Hunter D”.
The main antagonist Lee Woo-jin was dubbed by Crispin Freeman aka Alan Gabriel from “The Big O”, Hagi and Joel Goldschmidt from “Blood+”, Jeremiah Gottwald from “Code Geass”, Togusa from “Ghost in the Shell”, Karasu from “Noein”, Shannon Casull from “Scrapped Princess”, Tsume from “Wolf’s Rain”, and a few zillion other anime I have seen.
A secondary baddie Mr. Park was played by Kirk Thornton known as Kaname Ohgi from “Code Geass”, Hideo Kuze from the second “Ghost in the Shell” series, Goemon Ishikawa from various “Lupin III” media, Hachimaki from “Planetes”, and Hideo Shiina from “Figure 17″.
Other than that I don’t have much opinion on it beyond typical East-Asian cinema of the era.
