Thursday, February 13, 2014

Oldboy No Tricks

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I bitched and I moaned about anybody having the gall to remake Park Chan-wook's Oldboy from the moment it was rumored until the moment it came out, but even I, High Emperor of the Negative Nancies, could never have comprehended it turning out nearly as lousy as the final product turned out to be. Well maybe I could've comprehended it if it been remade by Michael Bay with Josh Gad in the lead or something, but not a Spike Lee joint, not with good actors like Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen. The Oldboy remake is so terrible I actually stopped being irritated at its existence at about the mid-point and just began to feel straight-up bad for everybody involved. It was like they all realized halfway through that this was a terrible, terrible idea but it was too late by then and they were trapped. That was the only emotional response this thing provoked - one of bewildered creative panic. You can see it in all their eyes. It's what I imagine you'd see in the eyes of someone just before a subway train runs their face over. That's about it - this movie's the equivalent of falling on the tracks and laying there stock-still for ninety minutes as a train going nil miles per hour comes at you; totally avoidable and pathetic.
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2 comments:

Josh Brolin's Oldboy said...

That movie gave me Josh Brolin, naked on all fours, point his ass crack to the camera, I will love it forever.

Anonymous said...

I have no interest in this. I loved the original, and the idea of a remake seemed ridiculous.

LOL, remember when Will Smith was supposed to star? Looks like he passes on bad scripts as well as good ones.