Oldboy

Dustin: 3 of 5 stars Nick: 3 of 5 stars Average: 3 of 5 stars (Woozy canary)

Dustin: Oldboy is a Spike Lee film based on a Korean film based on a Japanese manga. It’s a mystery/revenge tale about a man who has been locked up for 20 years by a mysterious jailer and has 48 hours to discover his jailer’s identity after being suddenly released.

Nick, your take?

Nick: The remake of this film had been planned for years, originally with Steven Spielberg directing and Will Smith starring. Since the first mention of the remake I have been dreading the day of its eventual release, but what I saw was not that bad. Though I’m not much of a Spike Lee fan and the adaption was written by Mark Protosevich, who wrote my least favorite adaptation, (yes AGAIN!), I Am Legend. Spike Lee’s Oldboy recreates the story taking out more unrealistic scenes that occur later and adding scenes at the beginning showing the hero’s destructiveness as a drunk before being imprisoned.

Dustin: Spike Lee was a more logical choice to direct since he has a Korean name: Lee. He did embellish a bit on the Korean film, but didn’t add much or improve on it. I didn’t much care for the main character, Joe’s (Josh Brolin), early scenes as a drunk douchebag. It made him hard to sympathize with. In the Korean version, the character, Dae-su, is shown to be the typical, pot-bellied Asian businessman who can’t hold his liquor and acts like a boy. He was a bit more realistic and sympathetic.

Nick: As I don’t know the lives of Asian businessmen, Oh Dae-su seemed like a douchebag to me, but in less screentime, which is always better. While in Spike Lee’s Oldboy, the scenes make him almost inhuman with how much doucebaggery is shown. Gets drunk, hits on business associate’s wife, gets drunk, gets drunk, gelijits drrrrrrrunkk. It’s worthless, but at least Lee tries to throw in scenes and take some out while still keeping the theme of the original story and characters.

Dustin: I got the feeling these scenes were added to make Joe’s transformation and repentance a little more satisfying. But I don’t really feel they were needed. We can just see him a selfish, flabby man and don’t really need to hate him at first.

Nick: The transformation in the original is much more satisfying and low-key when it comes to acting. Joe’s role is elevated to the nth degree when it comes to acting and reacting. Always a grimace, plea or snarl.

Lee’s version does nothing that is superior to the original, but does what needs to be done in order to create a somewhat worthwhile recreation of someone else’s work of art from the same type of media. Keep the theme, characters, genre, and change the scenery while putting a new spin on the story. There are a lot of Easter eggs for fans of the original. I’ll just say angel’s wings, octopus and a tongue.

Dustin: I liked some of Lee’s embellishments. Samuel L. Jackson was welcome, what with his constant use of “mother fucker.” There was also a good moment when Joe is hallucinating and he sees the bellboy from the poster in his room come to life (Spike Lee’s real-life brother). But this version didn’t differ enough from the Korean version to justify its existence other than to appeal to audiences who want a revenge/mystery story, but don’t want to read subtitles.

Nick: What did it need to change in order to justify its existence?

Dustin: I can’t say for sure, other than this film didn’t really find a voice of its own. I’m just not sure an American version needed to be made. And if it did, it should have been different enough to stand alone. I sort of think of this version as a supplement to Park Chan-wook’s film. There have been other remakes that have been good on their own, Sergio Leone’s remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo as A Fistful of Dollars comes immediately to mind. And Yojimbo was adapted from an American detective novel, Red Harvest (a little-known fact I discovered by chance while reading the novel).

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS

Dustin: I think it’s time to talk about incest…

I have to say the original came as a shock to me with the revelation of the villain’s motive and the hero had inadvertently slept with his daughter. There are a few similarities between Oedipus Rex and Oldboy. They are both mysteries that involve a ticking clock element, they both have a revelation of an incestuous relationship at the end. I think it’s shocking someone would attempt it today, when a small group of right-wing fanatics rates and censores American films.

Nick: It’s just one of my favorite endings because of how out of left field it is, though in Spike Lee’s version I felt it was much more apparent as there are more scenes of her growing up as a child into an adult and giving so much coverage to this one incident for 20 years on the same channel seems way suspect to me. One thing they changed was how he was convinced that this girl in front of him could not possibly be his daughter.

Dustin: I think we both agreed the incest could have been handled a little more deftly here. I cocked my eyebrow and I heard you laughing in the flashback where the father goes from room to room and his kids are like, “Father!” and immediately start undressing. That scene shouldn’t have been funny, but it was.

Nick: It was hysterical. My favorite was the son (eventual bad guy) who smiled so brightly when his father came in the room and enthusiastically tried to drop his pants. The son was about 19 in this scene.

END OF SPOILERS

Dustin: There was another problem with this film that sort of hurt it dramatically, which is that this subject matter is pretty unrealistic, and is better set with a touch of fantasy, but this film established itself in the real world. The passage of time was shown with news events from the past 20 years Spike Lee considers to be significant: Bill Clinton elected to a second term, 9/11, George Bush prematurely declaring “Mission Accomplished,” Hurricane Katrina, Obama elected to a second term. When Joe is released from his jail, we clearly see he has an Apple iPhone (the shot ensures we see it is an Apple), and they rely too heavily on Google for the preliminary search for the bad guy. These real world elements clash tonally with the content and theme. The Korean version omitted real world references, and by simply being in Korean, we are given enough distance to suspend disbelief. We are denied that in this version, and it doesn’t work as well.

Nick: In the original I believe that they also show the passage of time but from events all around the world, like the fall of the Berlin Wall. But let’s talk about what is considered a phenomenal sequence from the original when Dae-su walks down a corridor and sees it filled with his enemies. This might be one of my favorite fight sequences with the camera staying on the side creating a 2-D world while he fights his capturers. Every now and then he has to take a breath because he is getting tired and all this while he gets hit and punched with a knife shoved in his back and he actually feels the pain of all this while he trudges through to what could be seen as the end of a level in a video game. The new film tries to recreate this with actual levels, but fails to create its own virtuoso scene. I was hoping Lee would try something new.

Dustin: I think that kind of sums up the consensus. We keep waiting for something new, and it hardly delivers.

Would you recommend Oldboy?

Nick: It’s not worth the money, but if you’ve seen the original and you want to go see a fucked up movie with lots of blood then it’s for you. If you haven’t seen the original, I suggest streaming the movie or borrowing it from me (if you’re in my neck of the woods) and skipping a film that tried but ultimately failed to create something worthwhile.

Dustin: I’d actually recommend Lee’s Oldboy for those of you who haven’t seen the original. I envy you for being able to go in fresh.