Oldboy (2013)

Oldboy (2013)

6/10

Starring

Josh Brolin

Elizabeth Olsen

Directed by Spike Lee

A mind-blowing ending and an unbelievable path towards revenge, Oldboy is one movie you will not forget in a hurry after you have done seeing it, that is if you have not seen the original before this.

This movie is a remake of a South Korean film of the same name by Park Chan-wook in 2003. This 2013 film was criticized for its bad remake style of the original.

The movie starts in the year 1993 with an introduction of a jerk named Joe (Josh Brolin). Joe is an alcoholic and a divorcee with a daughter. He works in an advertising agency and he is not the kind of person you will want to market your product if you get to meet the true him.

After a winning pitch to a client, Joe got carried away and made a pass at the client’s wife as he fooled himself to believe that her laughing to his jokes were a sign that she was interested in an affair with him.

The client comes back from the restroom to witness Joe being naughty and walked away from the deal. Joe now feeling down, decided to take the night on by getting drunk and when he woke up from his drunken state he was locked in a room.

The movie doesn’t focus totally at the incarceration of Joe who was kidnapped from the year 1993 to 2013, but we get to here news of the outside world and how it was moving on without Joe in it.

Worse still how his daughter had moved on, without him.

Joe knows he must escape, but it seems weird with a camera on him, how was he going to get out of this place and back to his family.

As said above the movie had mostly negative reviews in comparison with the original. This large criticism turned it to a box-office bomb, making about $5 million on $30 million budget.

I guess Spike Lee should have tried to pull the deep performance, complex screenplay and directing that Park Chan-wook delivered in the original which won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and listed among the best movies of 2000s. The original was critically acclaimed and performed well in the box office.

I will advise you to watch the original version of this movie and ignore this, not that I did not enjoy this remake for what it delivered, but I think the South Koreans did a job with the story and performance than Spike Lee.