Though an Oldboy remake was never a popular idea, Spike Lee’s idiosyncratic style at least held the potential to bring some intriguing darkness to the adaptation of Park Chan-Wook’s intensely twisted vengeance tale.
Sadly, Lee’s numb, technical remake is not just Americanised but McDonaldised. Gone is the lurid, baroque atmosphere, the unrelenting David Lynchian unease – hell, no-one even eats a live octopus.
Josh Brolin plays Joe Doucett,a despicable womaniser who finds himself inexplicably imprisoned in solitary confinement for 20 years before being just as mysteriously released. Brolin does his best with a poorly written part, as Lee glosses over the complexities of an imprisoned mind. Instead of the manic energy and sexual aggression of Min Sik-Choi’s protagonist, Brolin’s Doucett is a macho, one-note video-game hero, ascending through emotionless levels of violence on his quest to find his captor – and indulge Hollywood’s recent resurgence of white male revenge fantasy. Even Wook’s infamous hallway hammer scene is transformed into a nonsensical three-level fight, where dozens of rigorously choreographed stuntmen patiently wait and bob, Street Fighter-style, for their turn to attack.
The simplistic psychology extends to wasted love interest Elizabeth Olsen and the laughably misjudged villain Sharlto Copely, who hugely undermines the most sinister reveals with his absurd Clifton Webb moustache-twirling.
Though sticking to the basic plot and upping the quota of elaborate violence, Lee lacks the fascinating fleshiness of Wook’s psychothriller. Adding nothing to the original and offering little as a mystery in its own right, it seems Oldboy didn’t need to learn any new tricks.