The Vengeance trilogy gets more and more baroque and operatic with each film. If Mr Vengeance felt like a lean and mean steak, Lady Vengeance felt like an extravagant beef bourguignon. Oldboy, the trilogy's second film, is rightly in the middle, balancing the stripped down meanness of Mr Vengeance, and the high melodrama of Lady Vengeance.

I find Mr Vengeance the trilogy's strongest film purely because of my sensibilities. Followed by Lady Vengeance: it's too much cheese, but I love that. I can never come up with a revenge melodrama like this in my head. Oldboy I'd rank as the third in this trilogy.

It's crazy how the film juxtaposes multiple 5/5 high points with poorly written, exploitative 1/5 low points. Clearly, the director wanted to keep the film relentlessly unpredictable by writing himself into a corner with each scene. Some of these moments are successful. Most aren't. The screenplay seriously relies on the stupidity of the police. I have never seen so many bad cops at each level in one film. Later, in The Wailing, he'll have exactly one bad cop be the lead.

What an emotionally overwhelming film. This film can't be topped. It is complete. It is beautiful. It's like the fog in the film. Cannot be penetrated. The last 25 minutes of the movie is world-class. Rituparno touches greatness with this movie. If I had seen this in a dark theatre, I might have cried.

Aamir Khan has turned making commercial cinema into a science. Or is it art? Or a bit of both?