Review of Oldboy (2013) by Kurt L — 25 Feb 2014

They really do NOT get much worse than this. American director Spike Lee (Malcolm X) has decided to remake the classic-ish 2003 Chan-wook Park (Stoker) film of the same name that is stylish, twisted and dark and definitely worth checking out.

Lee has removed the beating heart from that film and has given us a stone-cold, horribly ridiculous film starring Josh Brolin (Milk) as Joe Doucette, a man who is kidnapped off of the streets and held in a hotel-room cell for twenty years with nothing but bad food for sustenance and shoddy television for entertainment.

Before his confinement, we learn that Joe is a drunken lout who wants to skip his daughter's third birthday who also likes to verbally berate his wife. Soon after he is kidnapped, it is revealed his wife has been brutally murdered and he is the primary suspect After the twenty years are up and he is mysteriously set free (?), Joe searches for his abductor and wants to learn the fate of his daughter (whom he apparently now cares for because he has learned she plays the cello).

An old friend of his (Michael Imperioli - 'The Sopranos') and a new one (Elizabeth Olsen - Martha Marcy May Marlene) help him on his quest in which he confronts a sadistic torturer (Samuel L. Jackson - Pulp Fiction) and re-encounters a man he briefly knew in his youth (Sharlto Copley - District 9).

Jackson and Copley do their very best to make this film quite insufferable but Brolin doesn't do much to help it either as his groans and cries of pain and suffering are nearly unbearable. Why Lee decided to put a different spin on a decent film is beyond me .

.. perhaps it is because the director has nothing left of his own to give us. His career of late has been nearly as sad as this film. Avoid this. Do.