It's currently 12.02 on Sunday morning - that should give you an idea of how eager I was to post this weeks edition of awesome scene sunday, a feature which is fast becoming my favourite aspect of the blog.
Today's scene comes from a 2004 Koren film - given the prevalence of Korean cinema in the west, from that description alone most movie buffs can probably already guess what movie it is. That's right: Pan Chan-wook's Oldboy. I love this film, and as is always the case with A.S.S, if you haven't seen it I highly recommend you do so. However even you haven't seen it, feel free to watch the clip below as it contains no spoilers and given that it's a fight scene (albiet a brilliant one), it works just as well without any context.
Personally, I think this sequence is almost perfect. There's a real black humour to it in the dialogue and the few choice camera angles, a great piece of music that plays in the background, and of course, the majority of the scene is one long continuous shot, making for one of the most unique and badass fight scenes ever put to film. According to wikipedia (my source for just about everything), the scene took a total of 17 takes to get right...those poor stunt performers!
On a quick side note, I did actually consider using a different scene from Oldboy; Oh Dae Su's breakdown at the end of the film, as it contains what I think is probably the greatest piece of acting of the decade from the pictures star Choi Min-sik. The reason I went with this instead was two fold - one, because I didn't want to post the ending and thus risk spoiling the movie for those people who can't avoid temptation, and two, because quite frankly I just can't say no to a fight scene in which the good guys weapon of choice is a hammer.
You can check out previous A.S.S selections here.
