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When I first heard that they were remaking Oldboy, one of my favourite movies of all
time, I had one thought running through my head and that was '***, now they're going
to take credit for what was a fantastic story just because a bunch of stooges hated reading
subtitles'. But then I went and actually read the Oldboy manga and realised that the movie
deserves the credit for the story being good because the manga quite frankly was pretty
lame. The reason I bring this up, however, is because the film and the manga only share
the premise, with the overall plot and characters being completely different in almost every
way. This remake could have just taken the premise of the manga and told its own story,
becoming something really creative. But...well... They say it in the opening credits. This film
is not an adaptation of the manga. It's based on the Korean film. So, it's essentially that
South Korean masterpiece with American sensibilities. In the time it takes for this film to set
up that the main character is a bit of a drunken ***-head with nothing to live for, Park Chan-Wook's
film set up Oh Dae-Su, made him likable, had him kidnapped and had the plot moving. It's
not as if what the remake is showing has more substance. It's just more indulgent. Why give
us information in one sentence when you could do it in 40 with the subtlety of a pie to
the face. That said, I'm not too proud to admit that
I found the visual style of this movie interesting. This is my first ever Spike Lee joint and
I'm impressed. Whether it's the prison Doucett is kept in, the villain's lair or any other
location, every place manages to have this neon visual aesthetic that I'll be honest,
I really liked. Even the script has some decent original moments. Anytime that the script
does something that the original didn't do, it works really well in giving the main character
pathos and distinguishing this film as something that could work on its own. For example, the
motivation for the two main characters is different. For Oh Dae-Su, it's finding out
who did this to him so he can make amends. For Joe, in a very American sensibility, has
to find his kidnapped daughter. Whenever you're being forced to compare the original to this,
the original wins. When Oh Dae-Su was released into the outside world, he was completely
in awe of every sight, sound, smell, taste and feeling, especially when he met Mido.
Joe Douccett gets out after five more years then Oh Dae-Su did, and he's almost immediately
just fine. He sniffs some grass, looks up at the sky and then proceeds to immediately
start hardcore brooding, like Brolin convinced himself he was supposed to be playing the
Punisher. What really annoys me about this film is that
everything in this movie follows an American mentality. That being that it doesn't matter
if we remake essentially the same movie so long as we make it more gratuitous and exaggerated.
Let's not have the torture scene be just pulling teeth, let's have him extract flesh from his
neck and pour salt in the wound. Let's not have the villain be possibly sympathetic,
let's have him *** and *** the main character's wife just to frame him for it. Let's not have
one of the many twists of the original involve the villain and his sister, let's have the
twist involving him, his sister AND his father. They feel the need to show EVERYTHING because
subtlety can go *** a shotgun. Do you know what I find fascinating? The villain
has a line 'All this time, you never stopped to ask the most fundamental question of all'.
Mark Protosevich evidently didn't, because he has no idea what made the original good.
One of the great things about the original plot was that all of these people were flawed,
yet you, on some level, sympathised with them. In the original, the villain did everything
he did with a sense that it was proportionate retribution. In a sense, he wants Oh Dae-Su
to go through what he did. In this version, he prances around like a Bond Villain and
manages to fake an entire TV series just to mess with the main character. Also, there's
the aforementioned *** and *** he commits because we wouldn't want our characters to
be nuanced. We need a straight up hero and a straight up villain, because that's the
American way. The cast is okay. Samuel L. Jackson phones
it in a tad while Sharlto Copley hams it up. Josh Brolin gets really indulgent with his
performance and sometimes it really works while other times it's cringe-worthy. Elisabeth
Olsen is really good here. Sharlto Copley's Asian Bodyguard was also very cool. Shame
she got taken down so easily. The worst part is, this wasn't even Spike
Lee's complete film. There's still another 35 minutes in his directors cut that he was
forced to edit out. It took Spike Lee 140 minutes to try and do what Park Chan-Wook
did spectacularly in 120. I think the studios were right to have him cut it out.
What do you want me to say? This is one of the most pointless remakes ever made. They
could have adapted the manga or just taken the premise and did their own thing yet they
immediately decided to just remake the Korean film. It's not like RoboCop where they took
the backbone of the original story and did their own thing. They literally took the story
from the previous movie and changed a couple of details. It's no secret that the original
is the superior film by a mile. It had characters I could root for and care about, it managed
to be shocking without being gratuitous and it managed to be an engrossing experience.
This remake, however, may have a decent visual style, but it is a bloated, gratuitous and
overall unemotional film. Go watch the original and if you don't want to because you hate
foreign films, then you suck. It's as simple as that.