'Oldboy': Movie review
Spike Lee effectively reboots the 2003 Korean cult classic about a man who's mysteriously imprisoned for 20 years
Hilary Bronwyn GayleLeave it to Spike Lee to deliver one of the strangest, most off-putting movies for the Thanksgiving holiday.
'Oldboy,' Lee's 'reinterpretation' of a Korean cult classic from 2003, is rife with blood, quirkiness, four-letter poetry and general ickiness. While much of the movie feels like a major filmmaker slumming in genre territory, there are still a few ripe mysteries to be solved - if you're in the mood for that after too much time with the family.
Josh Brolin is Joe Doucett, who, in 1993, is a mess. Drinking and leching around, the two-bit ad exec stumbles out of a bar one rainy night - the night he missed his daughter's third birthday, his estranged wife tells him - and collapses near a mysterious figure. The next day, he awakens in a hotel-room-like cell, where he'll spend the next 20 years.
In that time, he never sees his captors, but he does see, on the TV near his bed, some curious shows, including a rip-off of 'America's Most Wanted' that features the murder of his ex-wife and the adoption of his child. Given a constant diet of vodka and Chinese food, Joe - his hair and beard shaggy - attempts suicide. Then he cleans up, focuses and tries, unsuccessfully, to tunnel his way out. Then, one day, he's drugged and wakes up in an open field.
His search for the person who trapped him, and why they did it, is aided by Marie (Elizabeth Olsen), a goodhearted EMS worker. When the trail leads to a peculiar jailer (Samuel L. Jackson), Joe's only halfway to an answer he will be very sorry he ever found out.
Jackson is cartoonish, as is Sharlto Copley in a brief but crucial role. They're thankfully offset by Brolin - one of the few actors in Hollywood who can intriguingly convey both tough masculinity and devious intellect - and Olsen, an actress whose fearlessness gets a real workout here. Their falling into love may ring false, but that's because it's one more angle in Mark Protosevich's update of Chan-wook Park's original film.
Lee adds homages to that, as well as his own twists on several signature moments, including a scene of Brolin beating back a dozen attackers with just a hammer and pure rage. The filmmaker is more comfortable with the latter than with the twists and turns, some of which come off seeming like requirements.
The last time Lee did this kind of easy handout to the establishment, the result was 2006's crisp, cool caper 'Inside Man.' 'Oldboy' has none of that movie's flair, but as Alfred Hitchcock did in 'Psycho,' Lee knows what moments need a jolt, which need your eyes to pop and which need to freak you the f- out.
Let's just say that when he has to deliver those particular scenes, he does the right thing.
jneumaier@nydailynews.com
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