Oldboy (2013)

Apparently Spike Lee disowned this remake of Park Chan-wook's 2003 revenge thriller, Oldboy, after his 140 minute version was cut to 104 minutes for its theatrical release. Whilst one can question why Lee, who is one of the film's 12 credited producers, was involved in this project in the first place, from what has been left to us it is impossible to see anything that comes close to justifying the project.

Although preserving the main narrative elements of the original film writer Mark Protosevich has extensively re-written the story, taking as it were, the intriguing Moebius strip that was Park’s original and flattening it into a conventionally linear Hollywood thriller. Similarly Lee has re-modelled the film using his familiar trademark stylistic flourishes but in the process turning what was a relentless intense odyssey of personal revenge and bitter self-discovery into a plodding exercise in gratuitously graphic violence.

Josh Brolin plays Joe Doucett an obnoxious drunk with a bad attitude who is incarcerated in what appears to be a hotel room for twenty years for no apparent reason with a television as his only connection with the outside world. Then one day he is released and sets about discovering why this happened to him.

Roughly speaking what made Park’s version so compelling was that we saw events through his protagonist’s eyes. In this version we see them, as it were, at a remove as the script has Joe dutifully work his way through familiar genre tropes – Elizabeth Olsen’s sympathetic social worker and romantic interest, Samuel L. Jackson’s vicious jailer (with Jackson venting his trade-mark potty-mouthed schtick), Sharlto Copley’s arch-villain and so on. The refreshing originality of Park’s film is dumbed-down into a standard-issue action thriller, stylish in places but without charm and when the big twist comes at the film's end it is completely without affect.

Oldboy 2013 is a waste of time in itself but compared to the original, it's a travesty.

 

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