There are some movies you can truly experience to the fullest from start to finish only once. If you are familiar with Park Chan-wook’s 2003 cult favorite and disturbing ultra-violent revenge thriller Oldboy, you know exactly what I mean.
Spike Lee has taken on the daunting task of re-imaging the South Korean film (itself based on the Japanese manga of the same name), and delivers an intense new take on the tale that is faithful to the original while including some debatable adjustments suited for American movie goers.
When we meet Joe Doucett in 1993, he’s an obnoxious advertising executive, and a raging booze hound. His drinking leads him to lose high profile clients and hopelessly backpedal to his family after failing see his daughter Mia on her third birthday.
Mia’s gift in hand, drunk and defeated in the pouring rain, he finds himself confronted by a mysterious figure. The things he sees the morning after are the only things he will see for the next twenty years. Doucett is imprisoned in a cell made out to resemble a dingy hotel room. His captors nourish him solely with Chinese take-out dumplings and a small bottle of vodka which are slid which are slip under a solid metal door. Doucett keeps track of time and current events only by the television set and without explanation, spending the next twenty years locked away in the room.
Through televised news reports, he learns that he has been framed for the brutal murder of his wife, and his daughter Mia has become the repeated subject of an ongoing investigative report on a tabloid magazine show. Just as abruptly as he was kidnapped, twenty years later Doucett finds himself free (now clean and sober), waking up in a wooden chest in the middle of a field, and determined to re-unite with his Mia.
What follows is Doucett’s obsessive quest to find Mia and consequently discover the secret of his sentence so he can exact revenge using the most violent means necessary (typically using a hammer as his weapon of choice). Joe meets Marie, a sympathetic nurse from a local free clinic (played by Elizabeth Olsen), and along with an old prep school buddy Chucky (Michael Imperioli), inevitably become personally intertwined with Adrian, the affluent man responsible for his imprisonment (Sharlto Copley).Upon receiving a tracked cell phone, Doucett is propositioned to solve the mystery of his jailing. If successful he will see his name cleared and all the answers will be revealed. If he decides to simply hunt down and kill Adrian, his true freedom will die along with him.
The thick plot thicken even further when Adrian presents Joe with the more pertinent question that at first eludes him “Ask not why you were imprisoned, ask why you were set free.”Lee’s film does not deviate greatly from the basic structure that moved the original from tense beat to tense beat. While notably excising a shocking culinary scene involving an octopus (though a nod to it exists), Lee manages to one-up Chan-wook’s breathtaking fan favorite one-take fight sequence in both brutality and body count. As far as the twists and turns plot that makes the Oldboy experience a wrenching punch to the gut, Lee and screenwriter Mark Protosevich indeed pull no punches. The approach and execution may have been altered as they deemed necessary for a Stateside audience (the script prefers broader strokes over the original’s selective subtle hints), and some of the overall shock value may have been toned down in this re-imagining, but the end result should remain nonetheless powerful for those not in the know.
Spike Lee has never backed away from controversial material, and Oldboy is bold, and unlikely, step forward in his career. While the audience is undoubtedly and inherently limited by the film’s edgy subject matter, Oldboy stills falls more on Spike’s 25th Hour and Inside Man Hollywood side of the resume than the projects his fans feel lie more along the lines of a signature Spike Lee Joint.
Lee has assembled a top notch cast. Brolin gives a visceral and haunting performance as the broken man on a dark missions of absolute revenge and urgent discovery. His physical transformation for the role is also impressive, going from a schleppy drunk to a chiseled warrior during his incarceration. Sharlto Copley as the mysterious Adrian, once again proves to be a big screen chameleon. He seamlessly embodies a chilling villain unlike any of his previous big screen efforts. Elizabeth Olsen has her thing down pat, and provides a solid dramatic performance as Doucett’s sympathetic link to a world he find himself two decades behind. Samuel L. Jackson chews up the scenery, as only Sam Jackson can, as the twisted foul-mouthed Mohawk-sporting “warden” of Doucett’s prison facility.
Oldboy is not for those squeamish in regards to brutal violence. Lee has successfully crafted a psychological revenge thriller that graphically depicts Doucett’s deadly skill with a hammer. Though I’d be hard pressed to say the dark puzzle pieces of Protosevich’s twist and turns screenplay will not leave deep wounds of their own on you.
It’s hard to categorize where exactly Oldboy fits in for an audience here. The expectations from fans of the cult original will immediately hold Lee’s re-imagining to rival the cinematic benchmarks set by Chan-woo, and it will be open to inevitable debate among the loyalists regarding which changes the film is essentially better off with.
Is this remake necessary? Absolutely not. But how many remakes are? Should the original have been just left alone to bask in its cult status and lurk under the mainstream radar? Perhaps. But thankfully we are not presented with a blasphemous version lacking its own merits to stand on or carelessly treads on its predecessor. For whom Spike’s take connects to, it will serve as a stepping stone to seek out the definitive version, which on the surface is not necessarily a bad thing. But for them every left turn in the story will instead be merely steps on a familiar path.
Lee, Protosevich and the solid cast deliver a intense roller coaster that undoubtedly makes its own memorable mark on the dark revenge genre, but will play best to those going in with a blank slate.
Oldboy opens in theaters on November 27th.
REVIEW RATING: ★★★★★
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: Josh Brolin, Sharlto Copley, Elizabeth Olsen, Michael Imperioli, Samuel L. Jackson
Screenwriter: Mark Protosevich
Studio: Film District
Rated: R
Running Time: 93 minutes
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