A mind-blowing
ending and an unbelievable path toward revenge—Oldboy is one movie you
won’t forget in a hurry after watching it. That is, if you haven’t seen the
original before this one.
This movie is a remake of the
2003 South Korean film of the same name by Park Chan-wook. The 2013
version was heavily criticized for its poor remake style compared to the original,
which came out ten years earlier.
The movie starts
in 1993 with the introduction of a jerk named Joe (Josh Brolin). Joe is an
alcoholic and a divorced father with a daughter. He works at an advertising
agency, and he’s not the kind of person you’d want marketing your product if
you ever met the real him.
After a winning
pitch to a client, Joe gets carried away and makes a pass at the client’s wife,
fooling himself into thinking her laughter at his jokes meant she was
interested in an affair.
The client returns from the restroom to witness Joe’s inappropriate behavior
and walks away from the deal. Feeling down, Joe decides to spend the night
getting drunk. When he wakes up from his drunken state, he finds himself locked
in a room.
The movie
doesn’t focus entirely on Joe’s incarceration—he’s kidnapped and held from 1993
to 2013—but we do get glimpses of the outside world and how it moves on without
him. Worse still, we see how his daughter has moved on without him.
Joe knows he must escape, but with a camera constantly watching him, how is he
going to get out of this place and back to his family?
As mentioned
earlier, the movie received mostly negative reviews compared to the original.
This wave of criticism turned it into a box-office bomb, making about $5 million
on a $30 million budget.
I guess Spike
Lee should have tried to capture the deep performances, complex screenplay, and
masterful directing that Park Chan-wook delivered in the original.
The
original won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and was
listed among the best movies of the 2000s. It was critically acclaimed and
performed well at the box office.
I’d advise you
to watch the original version of this movie and skip this remake. It’s not that
I didn’t enjoy this version for what it delivered, but I think the South
Koreans did a better job with the story and performances than Spike Lee.
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