Oldboy

When I first moved to Austin, I was still young and had the raging hormones of a jackrabbit that was watching a Dolly Parton movie for the first time. So needless to say, unless it was kung fu movie night, I didn’t really feel like sitting around and watching a movie with the boys. I preferred hopping down to dirty 6^th street and chasing busty blonds that could drop it like its hot to the Yin Yang Twins. But there was one particular movie that always piqued my interest and that was the Korean flick, Oldboy. My buddies kept raving about it but whenever their wake and bake high eventually wore off, they also had similar interests in chasing tail on dirty 6^th. So every time I had them pop the movie in, they would simply fast forward, oh wait it wasn’t a VHS tape, they would skip to the fight scenes and drunkenly yell “That’s all you need to see anyway!”

So over time I simply forgot about the movie, that is until one day recently when I saw somewhere that Spike Lee was remaking it. Once again however, my buddy movie blocked me and told me to wait for Spike’s version because it was supposed to be an incredible shot for shot remake of it; and this way I wouldn’t ruin the mind f&@$ that comes at the end. Well it seems like every critic in the world saw the original and because of that their experience of the remake was completely ruined. The movie got mixed at best reviews and as a result got a limited release in the U.S. Plus apparently its hard for Spike Lee to get studios to give him money for his movies these days. Really? I know that his filming style can be a little jarring at times and that some of his movies completely miss the mark; but can the director of Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing, and He Got Game really not get money to make movies? It’s been decades since Brian De Palma made a good movie but he still gets money. Mel Gibson has offended every human (even other racists) on the planet yet he’s still in movies. Oh well, I was finally able to track down Oldboy in the barrios of Austin, and once I threw on my hoodie to fit in with everyone else, I was ready to finally witness freshness.

There’s not much that I want to tell you in regards to the plot because I don't want to ruin the experience for you. But the story follows Joe (Josh Brolin), an awful and self-centered alcoholic salesmen who is about as unlikeable as they come. And being that I’m a salesman myself, I can testify that this pretty much describes every sales person that has ever existed. If there ever was a species that deserved genocide, this would be it. Well one drunken night after pissing off a multitude of people, including his ex wife for missing his three year old daughter’s birthday party, he runs into an Asian lady. The next thing you know he wakes up underground in a fake hotel that has no windows and no door. He is fed the same meal everyday through a slot in the wall and is forced to watch updates about how he is blamed for brutally raping and killing his ex wife, leaving his daughter to grow up in a foster home.

Well after 20 years of being stuck in this place, he suddenly wakes up in a suitcase that is above ground. He gets out and immediately attempts to figure out what happened to him and his life and why these events occurred in the first place. But as he seeks revenge for his random imprisonment, more and more awful facts are revealed and you are taken to places that you never wanted to go to; either in real life or on film.

Spike Lee is on point with what he brings to the story utilizing his signature style. He can be a master of at using his surroundings to set up a scene and to add whatever emotion he wants to without the actors even saying a word. Sometimes he goes overboard with this but not here, it seems like the producers held him in check quite a bit. He also held his own when it came to the fighting scenes, which really surprised me. I was worried about how that would come off  in what appears to be modern day Brooklyn and with a white lead actor, but it worked and afterwards you were sold on Josh Brolin being this badass. I will watch Elizabeth Olson do absolutely anything, so of course I liked her, but having said that, none of the actors really added any depth to the characters. It’s like they all watched the original and got lost in reading the subtitles; forgetting to actually pay attention to how the actors told the story. I blame Lee for not pushing them more but the plot is so good that you get caught up in the story and overlook the sub par performances.

I will say that this movie isn’t for everyone; the themes are so dark that no one was even laughing at the obvious jokes that were in the movie. Everything Sam Jackson said or did was hilarious as he dropped “mother#@$” as many times as he possible could. And by the time the ending was revealed I was the only one who gasped out loud. I NEVER do that! I’m fairly certain the only times I’ve done that in the past 7 years was during Oldboy and 12 Years A Slave.

If you have seen the original, I suggest that you skip this remake as all of the suspense will be taken away for you. So you will sit there picking apart every flaw of the movie instead of actually enjoying it; similar to M. Night Shimashamalan’s The Village. But if you’ve never seen it before, I rate this movie as FRESH and suggest that you pop in because the ending is one of the all time  biggest mind f%$# ever!