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Critics Consensus: Suitably grim and bloody yet disappointingly safe and shallow, Spike Lee's Oldboy remake neither surpasses the original nor adds anything new to its impressive legacy.
Critic Consensus: Suitably grim and bloody yet disappointingly safe and shallow, Spike Lee's Oldboy remake neither surpasses the original nor adds anything new to its impressive legacy.
All Critics (145) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (57) | Rotten (88) | DVD (1)
Everything is wrong with [Spike] Lee's version of Park Chan-wook's notorious, super-violent super-action-thriller. For one thing, it's far from super. Not the quality, per se (although, for Lee, that's off, too), but the energy.
Why would we want to watch a chronicle of Joe's agonies, and the agonies he gets to inflict on others? Passing it up would be the best revenge.
Hollywood's wildest cinematic freakout since "Shutter Island" is a remake of-and an improvement on-the Korean original, from 2003.
A vivid yet academic remake, this Oldboy is shorter, leaner and lesser.
Sometimes I don't understand the Hollywood mindset. Who thought remaking Park Chan-wook's 2003 cult classic, Oldboy, was a good idea?
Much of the dialogue is stilted (several scene are laughable) and the melodrama feels unmoored without the lurid, baroque atmosphere of Park's film -- which, after all, was kind of the whole point.
Oldboy is elaborate and complex, but that's not the same thing as being engrossing and deep. It winds up being a better riddle than it is a movie.
The remainder of the picture suffers from a predictable lack of originality. But the inability to consistently entertain is an issue of its own creation.
It's an unconventional action film whose closest American kin might be Christopher Nolan's "Memento." It doesn't all work, but it's fascinatingly conflicted.
The film has graphic violence and perversion, but there is no take-away. It leaves you trying to nail down what the point to this remake really was.
Lee's remake will strike a cord with unfamiliar audiences, but, for the most part, it's a hit-and-miss effort that comes close to good results.
The first hour or so of Lee's 'Oldboy' is so gripping that it's dispiriting to watch the wheels fall off the wagon so spectacularly in the third act.
The remake of the Korean mind fuck does not shy away from most of the unpleasant aspects of the original, but it's a leaner, less detailed version, which makes it somewhat easier to stomach. The result is sometimes unintentionally funny, sometimes brutal, but the mystery is engaging and the movie entertaining enough. In other words: if you know the original, you won't need this. If you don't, this might very well blow your mind.
Super Reviewer
Watched half. It's crap. Watch the original Korean version instead.
I haven't seen the Korean original, but what I saw here was a plot driven sonuvagun that takes no prisoners (whatever fans of the original might spout). Josh Brolin is the best I've ever seen him in this tale of revenge, and revenge again, that's rough to watch unless you were born in a prison, and maybe even if you were. Sharlto Copley is making a career playing bad guys, but at least this one has a rationale going for him which is well played. And Samuel L. Jackson ... what need be said?
Josh Brolin is an extremely bad choice for the role of the protagonist. Besides, the execution is too weak, and is bound to disappoint regardless of having already watched the original or not.
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