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Old Boy: A Near Equal Remake of the Original

By Brock Wilbur · December 1, 2013

The Spike Lee adaptation of Park Chan-wook's 2003 cult classic Oldboy is most comparable, not to another Americanization of a foreign film, but rather to the film adaptation of Watchmen. In both cases, the failures (as well as the successes) remain the same. Both films modernize and streamline functions of a mystery film disguised as an action film; both change their ending in manners that thematically enhance but emotionally deteriorate the original's meaning; in both cases the directors can be praised for doing it less bad than anyone else, whilst lacking the addition of any personal flourish; in both cases you must ask why anyone would prefer this interpretation, while offering faint praise to those elements which managed to excel in a lesser vision.

That is to say, Lee has done a technically proficient job of recreating a film that, by those who love it, love it to death. I have no qualms with his version, and even feel disappointed that he brought so little of himself to the picture, for if we are going to re-invent, let's at least make something new. Up against something like Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, at least the Americanization got Fincher'd to the point is deserved to be its own entity. Lee tones down some elements (much as what was always feared of a U.S. remake), while tonally darkening other plot points beyond the original, and striking a chord of bleak hostility that perhaps a lesser director would have avoided. It's hard to discuss without giving away an entire act of spoilers, but for the decade I spent horrified at what Hollywood could undue from such a labyrinthine plot, I am almost entirely satisfied by the balance struck.

This leaves only the comparison of actors and their performances. Josh Brolin was built for this role, and is served by the expanding of his character's flaws in the first act, which, while almost comical in the original, is poised as unmistakably irredeemable in this version. Elizabeth Olsen adds a new depth to Marie, Samuel L. Jackson as the prison master gives a performance almost completely out of place yet standard scene stealing Jacksonian enough to be fine, and Sharlto Copley gives The Stranger a pan-sexual twist that falters somewhere between hilarious and genuinely creeptastic.

It's hard not to end on the reminder that the original is better, but by the performances, staging, and slight alterations to troublesome plot-points, it's hard to not see this remake as a near equal to the original. Some of the spirit and shock may be removed, but in its place is a tighter version of the same mindfuck of a tale.