The praises of Park Chan-Wook’s archetypal revenge classic have been sung and sung, and naturally Spike Lee’s Western rehash has been expected with naught but unavoidable anxiety.
We begin following Joe Doucet on his last day of freedom. A poor father and husband; a lecherous, schlubby drunk, ripe for reprogramming. He is taken and trapped in a nightmarish bedsit for reasons unknown while his wife is murdered, and the blame laid at his feet. For twenty years his torture endures, until he is set free and told he has seven days to discover why he was subjected to this torment; and more importantly, why he was set free.
Now that sounds incredible – what a fantastic idea for a film. It’s just a shame Park Chan-Wook got there first. Park’s original had the initial gut-punch of a plotline, the likes of which we had never encountered before. It was a revenge story mythical in its telling. What Spike Lee has made is a noble yet pointless and perfunctory attempt to retell it for the subtitle-phobic.
OLDBOY was not a fun film, it was an ordeal: nihilistic, freakish and savage.
Josh Brolin plays Doucet with engaging physicality – one is truly overwhelmed by the impressive shape he is in. However he is simply too handsome, too Hollywood to ever make us think he was the victim of such a protracted ordeal. Sharlto Copley lends his brilliant presence here and there, and is the only thing worth sticking around for, bizarre accent and all.
Various characters and plot points have been fleshed out, and some of the more horrific moments have been omitted entirely. Strangely, the violence has been amped up: scenes of Joe’s aggression now have a THE RAID feel of badassery and chic to them, which is engaging at the time but it misses the point. It is cool and fun, but the original OLDBOY was not a fun film, it was an ordeal: nihilistic, freakish and savage.
The butterfly-inducing twist remains intact, thankfully, but there are no scenes with scissors or squids, or painful sex, and without them one wonders what the point was. Remaking this film was an utterly thankless task, and while it firmly misses the mark, one can’t help but salute Spike Lee’s bravery.
httpvh://youtu.be/ZrLcnrnEqyI
I would salute Lee’s bravery if he’d been brave enough to say “no”. If he’d said “this is pointless” and walked away.
What this film does do is take us one step closer to American cinema finally collapsing under the weight of its growing refusal to make any film that isn’t seemingly a sure thing because it’s a remake, reboot, retread, re–imagining or redundant reinterpretation of some other already popular work. So that’s a bonus.
Though, of course, it isn’t ‘American cinema’ as such that may be under threat, but what we loosely call Hollywood – I, for one, would not wish to do without Woody Allen, Frances Ha, Nebraska, Upstream Color…