However, in 2003, Korean director Park Chan-wook brought about a film which for us westerners needed words at the bottom of it, and that very movie has grown to become one of the greatest mystery/thriller's in modern film-making. Oldboy was brilliant. Vivid, gritty, action-packed and sickening; the concept was ingenious. A man is kidnapped and incarcerated in a hotel room for 15yrs without any clue as to who his captor is or why he's being held prisoner. Then, suddenly, he awakes in a rather large toy chest on a rooftop dressed in a brand new suit with a cell phone and a wad of cash on him. Roll a bloody awesome twist-laden journey of incest and Kung fu learnt off of Bruce Lee films. Epic scenes involving 100-man brawls, wolfing down Live squid and removing your own tongue have since entered cinema's Hall of Fame.
And, why have I begun with the older...Oldboy? Because we mustn't forget what an absolute triumph it was. I can only imagine that director, Spike Lee (Malcolm X, Inside Man), and Hollywood may have thought, "hey, let's remake this famous crazy Asian film man because like, people don't wanna read the bottom of the screen and shit, and it's got fighting and sex in it, so let's just do it, yeah?...". With this, I became nervous. Why try and re-create the original when it was so good?
Well, I finally got around to watching this last night and it was almost a carbon copy of the original, but with a few stars chucked in and a bit of a mess, as I thought it would be. Josh Brolin plays Joe Doucett; the ultimate cliche. A down and out ad guy, divorced with a drinking problem and a tendency to masturbate into pillow cases (which is a new one?) who experiences the same ill-fate as Oh Dae-su from it's predecessor. Confined for 20yrs this time, he's framed for the murder of his ex-wife; mother to his daughter, Mia, who he wasn't interested in until he was forced to watch her play the cello on the telly like 9 times.
When he eventually awakens in a trunk in the middle of a field, he's hell-bent on saving his daughter who will be killed unless he can uncover the identity of his kidnapper and figure out why he was taken in the first place. He meets a young medical volunteer, Marie, played by Elisabeth Olsen (erm, younger sister of the Olsen twins) who learns of his troubles and joins him in his quest for answers.
What can I say about her? She's a girl. That is literally all I can remember. Please Adam; elaborate you say?...okay, erm, quite a nice back? Her performance doesn't exactly breath take, and compared to the beautifully tormented Kang Hye-jung from '03, she's proper flakey. Don't even get me started on the the elusive antagonist, played by Sharlto Copley who was absolutely outstanding as van de Merwe in District 9, as he fails so miserably as the unconvincing millionaire with daddy issues who has about 7 different accents by the 2nd Act.
Brolin however has clearly worked hard on his physical appearance for the movie, particularly as Lee shot it in a very small time frame, as he goes about transforming from fatty to beefcake in impressive fashion. Ah, the wonders of having a Beverly Hills dietitian. He's decent, looks menacing but I just don't think he was given that good a script to work with. Replacing the 'squid bit' with a montage of him devouring a whole bunch of boiled won tons to find a lead is like peeling potatoes besides a Benedictine monk. Boring.
Even Samuel L. Jackson has been brought into the mix to plays the hotel warden/gangster man guy to probably give the movie a smidgen of pizazz and an extra credit on the film poster to draw an audience. His character also gets the best deal ever by earning a fuck ton of diamonds for doing absolutely nothing. And surprisingly for a bad guy, never gets his comeuppance. This role could have been played by a iguana and received a much lesser pay check.
I have no problem at all focusing my review on the comparison between new Oldboy and the original, because that's what everybody will do. It falls short in almost every department. It feels rushed, characters aren't particularly engaging and Samuel L. Jackson's Mohawk is just ludicrous. If you haven't seen the 2003 movie, then you might actually quite enjoy this version because the story does captivate and as far as action movies go; it ticks most boxes. In my opinion though, forget this westernised stab at telling a fantastically gruesome story and get some reading glasses. Trust me.
Oldboy (2013) receives 1/5 Macho Man Randy Savages because Koreans are like, way better at conveying the complexities of foreign cuisine.
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