Post by StevePulaski on Mar 10, 2014 9:46:17 GMT -5
Oldboy (2013)
Directed by: Spike Lee
Directed by: Spike Lee
Josh Brolin in Oldboy.
Rating: ★½
Spike Lee's Oldboy is a farcry from Park Chan-wok's original Korean film of the same name, and it's a farcry from a good film in general. The opening title informs us this is a "Spike Lee Film," which should offput any fan or cinephile. In his two decades of filmmaking, Lee has always named his projects "joints" with an opening title card declaring itself "A Spike Lee Joint." The fact that Oldboy is a film and not a joint is offputting because it perhaps states a certain lack of confidence on his behalf. Even in his most professional films (IE: Malcolm X) he would always precede the events with the aforementioned title card.
Why Lee would even want to touch the poetic Korean film that has been hailed as a classic is beyond me to begin with, much less his choice to call this an actual film rather than a "joint." The 2003 Korean film has gone on to be dubbed something of a contemporary classic for Korean cinema along with cinema in general. Like all classics, it never needed to be remade for any reason at all (if something is a classic, why the logical reason for a remake anyway if the first one was good enough to even own the title anyway?). It wasn't flawed in any major, corrupting way, it wasn't a story that needed an American twist on it, and it certainly wasn't taken from a relatively unknown film either. Again,. this only leads to questions being asked that I'll presumably never get a straight answer to.
There's almost no need to reiterate the storyline for the film because if you're reading a review of the Oldboy remake you likely have seen the original film or, at very least, have a good idea of it. To begin with, very little is changed about the original story. Josh Brolin portrays Joe Doucett this time, however, a morose, alcoholic father who objectifies women, angrily scolds his ex-wife, hates his infant child, and is ungodly arrogant. This is our protagonist, mind you, bearing more than enough characteristics fit for a villain. The original film had more of an anti-hero focus to it, while this one just uses its focus to show a mean-spirited, incorrigible brute with little to no feelings whatsoever.
Joe is eventually kidnapped in a drunken-haze and put in a clean-cut hotel room, fed three times a day, and gassed in order to be put to sleep. Through his time in this hotel-room (from 1993 to 2013), he witnesses events that have shaped recent world history, fights fits of rage, learns how to fight with more force and strength, and uses cheap, stereotypical exercise videos featuring voluptuous women as a masturbatory fix.
He is released in a large suitcase in the middle of an open field twenty years after being captured with no explanation whatsoever. He has been declared missing for years now, his wife has been murdered and he is the prime suspect, and he no longer has any close friends. Armed with his intelligence and the fighting skills he perfected on the hard walls of his hotel room, he seeks revenge on those who put him away in captivity for twenty years.
Let's start with what the Oldboy remake does right (this will go pretty quickly). For one, they took the half-hour Joe spends in captivity and made it an actual grueling experience for the audience too in terms of what we were exposed to and what we had to endure. We feel as trapped as Joe does, and the fact that Lee seems to have focused on this segment of the story longer than Park Chan-wook did for the original film. It may be a comment that will exclude me from the cinephile crowd for a while but I'd argue Lee does the captivity scenes better. Lee seems more concerned with taunting this character while he's in captivity, with the example of Joe befriending a mother mouse who gives birth to several little mice only to have something tragic happen. Lee plays with his sole character during this scene and, in turn, makes it a memorable, affecting experience.
Now for the bad (this may take a minute). To begin with, the midsection of the film feels as if it had been heavily rushed into completion, with its timeline jumping all over the place and it never appearing to take time to slow down and develop what it's focusing on. There has been a lot of internal controversy surrounding this remake, be it Spike Lee fighting with the marketing team, or the fact that Lee's original cut was heavily edited down, but regardless, the behind the scenes drama may make the choppiness and easy thing to justify. Furthermore, it comes back down to the unlikable protagonist. Oldboy's original concept was so rooted so much more in seamy yet beautiful cinematography and felt more like a warm and often personal experience of revenge, brutality, and struggle, if that makes even the slightest bit of sense. It had a musicality that couldn't easily be matched. Lee's Oldboy just doesn't do that at all. It's a mediocre stand-alone film because of the aforementioned issues with its pacing and editing, but it's a downright bad film in the regard that its protagonist is a brute and its existence isn't at all necessary. For as much controversy Spike Lee drums up, the Oldboy remake could've been his retaliation in the way of, "I make what I want and I succeed, so deal with me." Instead, it's the equivalent of the art student who dyes his or her hair blue, sits in a corner, and begs "notice me" without ever making or doing anything worth noticing.
Starring: Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen. Directed by: Spike Lee.