Starring: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley & Samuel L. Jackson
Directed by: Spike Lee
Rating: 0 stars
Fans of Oldboy, the heavy acclaimed 2003 South Korean thriller directed by Park Chan-wook, have for a long time speculated about just how bad the American remake would be. Languishing in development hell for what must have seemed like an eternity, Spike Lee was the director arrogant stupid enough the think that he could perfectly translate a very disturbing and intricate crime thriller into something fresh for English speaking audiences who can’t be bothered to read subtitles.
And he failed. Oh how he failed. And his failure is so specular.
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| We're sorry we saw the movie, really, we are!! |
The movie begins with its protagonist Joe (Brolin) pissing on a wall which is ironic, as this moment perfectly sums up what Spike Lee and his team have done to the original movie. Joe then vomits in the street, another foreshadowing of how the audience, and fans of the original, will feel once the credits roll. And they won’t vomit because of the high gore content, no, they will vomit because this movie aptly proves Hollywood’s current distain and lack of originality that is plaguing modern cinema.
Something else that rears its ugly head and shoves itself down the audience’s gullet is the movie’s incredibly high amount of product placement. I’m not sure why anyone would want to buy an I-pad or an I-phone or an Apple Mac just because Josh Brolin has one in Oldboy, but I guess this piece of shit movie had to get funded somehow.
Even if Spike Lee and the script writer had literally copied the original movie shot for shot, we would have had something.
Maybe.
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| "Why are we here again?" "I don't know..." |
But no, they decided to take important plot points out, and then add nothing to explain how the remaining story fits together. This means that the plot jumps from one thing to the next with no explanation, and is therefore completely disjoined and incomprehensible.
It’s horrible features like this that contribute to Oldboy being one of the very worst movies I’ve ever seen.
And I saw Movie 43.
The one positive thing I have to say about Oldboy, is that it is just so awful it shows how well made the original is. And trust me when I say, I’m not a fan of the original. At all. But comparatively speaking, this version makes the original look like a masterpiece of cinema, which, coming from me is really saying something because I actually really dislike the South Korean version. I think it’s vile, and its plot is hateful. But it had some redeemable qualities to it, a characteristic not shared with this remake.
There is no style or tone. There is no tension. There is no continuity. There are no characters, and the situations they are placed in are so unbelievable that it boggles the mind to think just how anyone allowed this script to get green lit.
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| "What chu lookin' at fool?" Oh Samuel... can't you do better than this?? |
The acting is atrocious. Josh Brolin is coked-up and over the top, Elizabeth Olsen looks like she’s reading the script, that man from that film people liked ages ago acts like a worse version of the gay villains in Diamonds Are Forever and Samuel L. Jackson is Samuel L. Jackson with a blonde Mohawk.
But even though the entire cast are dreadful, I must berate Olsen the most of all, because not only does her character make no sense in the film, because she really should know better than to follow an insane psychotic stranger who murders people around whilst he kills people with a hammer, her acting is soul-suckingly terrible. She has no presence, no ability to deliver dialogue and absolutely no personality.
She does however, have nice tits. But that’s it.
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| Elizabeth Olsen- spitting in the face of competency... |
There are so many atrocities committed in Oldboy it’s actually quite hard to remember them all.
The fact that we don’t believe that main couple’s relationship, or that they love each other, is really bad, because that is one of the strengths of the original, which is incredibly important to the entire point of the movie.
The random violence- for example when Joe kills some innocent teenage athletes- is insane and unnecessary. Maybe Spike Lee just wanted to see some white people to die.
Also, the torture scene is harrowing just because it is so explicit and completely superfluous to the plot.
But the worst, and I mean the very worst part of the entire film is, without a doubt, the ‘spoof’ in the middle. For those of you unfamiliar with the original film, the very best part of it is when the protagonist fights a group of men in a narrow corridor with a hammer.
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| Why, Spike Lee, why? What did I ever do to deserve this crap?? |
This moment has style, substance, amazing choreography and is a feat of cinema. But in the remake, Spike Lee decided to do this moment in computer game style. Think Streets of Rage 2 but with real people and not at all enjoyable. 1980s street punks jump out of walls to attack Joe, and he fights them off like he’s got the power of The Avengers.
It looks awful, it isn’t funny, and it takes a big fat dump on everything good about Park Chan-wook’s.
As I said before, I’m not even a fan of the original. I only saw this version to see just how low Hollywood could sink. And just when you think things can’t get any worse in 2013, along comes Oldboy, a film so bad it almost makes Prometheus look good.
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