In 2008, "Oldboy" was placed 64th on an "Empire" list of the top 500 movies of all time. The same year, voters on CNN named it one of the ten best Asian films ever made. It was ranked #18 in the same magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. In a 2016 BBC poll, critics voted the film the 30th greatest since 2000. In 2020, "The Guardian" ranked it number 3 among the classics of modern South Korean Cinema.