Oldboy (2003)

Park Chan-wook's Oldboy is one of the most viscerally shocking and formally inventive films ever made, featuring a hallway fight sequence shot in a single take over three minutes with minimal editing. This brutal neo-noir about a man imprisoned for fifteen years without explanation and his obsessive search for answers grossed $78 million worldwide on a $3 million budget. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, making it faster to achieve international acclaim than the average Korean thriller.