http://youtu.be/ZrLcnrnEqyI
Monday brought us the first official poster for Spike Lee’s Oldboy remake. Today, the first trailer for the controversial remake has appeared. To summarize the film’s plot, I’ll simply share the film’s official synopsis before I go in on Spike Lee’s take:
OLDBOY is a provocative, visceral thriller that follows the story of an advertising executive (Josh Brolin) who is abruptly kidnapped and held hostage for 20 years in solitary confinement. When he is inexplicably released, he embarks on an obsessive mission to discover who orchestrated his bizarre and torturous punishment only to find he is still trapped in a web of conspiracy and torment.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? The problem I have with Spike Lee’s Oldboy, as have a lot of my other film critics and peers, is that Lee’s American remake appears to be a shot-for-shot remake of the South Korean classic. I’m somebody who champions and supports all forms of adaptations; I believe that taking material and bending it to become its own entity is one of the greatest things an artist can do with their art. However, what Lee has done, based off of this early trailer, is essentially take an already amazing film and simply re-shooting it in English (along with the typical muted Spike Lee look).
Why not just watch the original? Oldboy is streaming on Netflix Instant Watch right now (albeit with a terrible English dub). What made Oldboy an instant classic (the revenge plot, the visceral desperation of Oh Dae-Su, the gritty violence, the emotional/psychological ramifications facing Oh Dae-Su, etc.) seems to be exactly what Spike Lee is aping off of. I understand the business of remaking foreign films for American audiences, as such remakes will find a larger Stateside audience in English with American actors as opposed to being subtitled with foreign actors. However, at least take some liberties with the material, take risks with the material, do something different with it.
Now this might just be both the film critic and Oldboy fanatic within me, but based off of this initial trailer, I am not happy with the direction the remake seems to be going in. If the story sounds interesting to you, I highly suggest watching the South Korean original first. Absorb the world that Choi Min-sik and Park Chan-wook crafted a decade ago.