Despite striking visuals and Josh Brolin’s all-in performance, the new “Oldboy” fails to build a riveting, believable mystery strong enough to support its big twist.
In the Spike Lee film, Brolin stars as Joe Doucett, a deplorable advertising executive who has all the time in the world to drown himself in alcohol, but none to spend with his daughter. During one particularly drunken night, Joe is snatched off the street and wakes up trapped in a small room. After 20 years of solitary confinement and dumplings, Joe is suddenly released and challenged to figure out who ordered his lengthy prison sentence and why.
If you’ve seen the Chan-wook Park original, it’s impossible to experience this new version objectively, but Lee’s rendition does deserve a standalone assessment first.
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Who knows what we would have got had Will Smith and Steven Spielberg followed through with their plans to remake Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy, but, odds are, it would have been entirely different than the one we’re getting from Josh Brolin and Spike Lee on Wednesday, November 27th. Brolin stars as Joe Doucett, an advertising executive decimating his career and family life with his abysmal behavior and alcohol addiction. At the tail end of one particularly drunken night, Joe is snatched off the street and wakes up in solitary confinement. After 20 years of loneliness and dumplings, he’s suddenly released and challenged to figure out why he served such a lengthy sentence.
Elizabeth Olsen has maintained a steady stream of work since her indie hit, Martha Marcy May Marlene, but with films like Godzilla and The Avengers: Age of Ultron on the way, Olsen is going to hit a whole new level and she’s about to begin that progression up with the highly anticipated remake of Oldboy. Olsen steps in as Marie Sebastian, a volunteer nurse who comes face to face with Josh Brolin’s Joe Doucett shortly after wrapping up his 20-year stint in solitary confinement. Even though Joe is understandably rattled and rather off-putting, he strikes a cord with Marie and she agrees to help him assimilate. The thing is, in order to do that, she’ll have to dive into the vicious mystery that’s been plaguing him for the past 20 years of his life.
Whereas both Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen have to live up to the expectations set by Min-sik Choi and Hye-jeong Kang in Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy, Michael Imperioli has the luxury of portraying a character from the manga that’s yet to make it to the big screen. Brolin leads as Joe Doucett, a brash selfish drunk who’s suddenly plucked off the streets and thrown into solitary confinement for 20 years. Even though he comes out a changed man, the people in his life are left with the impression he made before his disappearance and nothing more. Fortunately for Joe, his life-long pal Chucky (Imperioli) is willing to give him a second chance.
As a remake of the beloved Chan-wook Park 2003 original, Spike Lee’s Oldboy has a lot to live up to.
You know that feeling when you’re doing something you shouldn’t and are on edge about someone catching you in the act? Okay, enough dancing in circles. Have you ever watched porn in the privacy of your own room and are terrified that your mom will walk in and catch you? Of course you have! That’s kind of what Women in Trouble is like. While it’s certainly not pornography, it evokes that same uneasy feeling that you’re watching something that’s so wrong but so right at the same time.