Monday December 02, 2013

WARNING: SPOILERS

Park Chan-wooks Oldboy (2003), starring Choi Min-sik and Kang Hye-jeong, is the one of the greatest revenge movies ever made. Spike Lees Oldboy, starring Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen, is not.

The new Oldboy is both more grounded and less believable. Its less dreamlike, less cartoonish, less comic, and packs less of an emotional wallop. It give us more of Joe Doucett (Brolin) acting like a drunk asshole, more of Joe imprisoned in the room, and a greater subterfuge about the love interest (Olsen), but its not as good, not as clever, and obviously not as original. It corrects some of the mistakes of the Korean version but makes its own. It shortens the length of the movie by 16 minutes but hardly to its advantage. As the climax looms, we think, Already?

Admittedly remaking a classic is a tough gig.

The prison

Joe Doucett is an ad executive and alcoholic, who, as the movie begins, blows a deal by coming onto his clients wife. Afterwards, he gets massively drunk, roams Chinatown, buys a cheap Buddha gift for his 3-year-old daughter, throws up on himself, and knocks on the door of the bar of his friend Chucky (Michael Imperioli). Then a beautiful woman with an umbrella appears, beckons him, and Joe disappears. All thats left behind is the Buddha.

He wakes in a hotel room with the shower running. He assumes its the umbrella woman but nobodys there. His clothes are gone, theres no phone, no room service. At first he thinks hes simply locked in; then, as food and vodka appear, he realizes hes being kept prisoner in the room. We realize, meanwhile, that the Korean version didnt give us this. It went right to being imprisoned for two months, as its main character, Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), veers between rage and catatonia. Both responses come off as comic. Thats part of the tension in watching: not laughing at this man in his horrible predicament. Spike Lee doesnt give us this. So theres less tension.

What does Joe do in his imprisoned hotel room? He drinks, he cries, he jacks off. After this last, gas fills the room, and some time later he finds out via the TV news that his ex-wife has been raped and murdered and the irrefutable evidence points to ... him. Hes now a wanted fugitive.

After a few years he gets serious. He stops drinking, gets in shape, readies himself for revenge. Hes tunneling his way out, a la Andy Dusfrene, but at the last moment gas fills the room again. Except when he awakes, hes out, hes free. Where? Korean version: on a rooftop. U.S. version: in a coffin in the middle of a field. OK. And theres the woman with the umbrella again. OK. Its amazing how she hasnt aged. Or maybe this is a different woman.

Its amazing how he hasnt aged. Joe actually looks better now than when he went in. He also seems saner. Every one of these points is at odds with the Korean version; every one seems wrong.

He follows the umbrella girl until ... well, now its a homeless man, standing in line for free health care, and the volunteer nurse on staff is Marie Sebastian (Olsen), who gets caught up in Joes life and story. As does Chucky. As does Adrian (Sharlto Copley of District 9), the man who imprisoned him, who sets him on a 48-hour mission to find out the answer to these two questions: who is he and why did he imprison Joe for 20 years? If he can answer these, his daughter, now 23, and a cellist somewhere, will live, hell be given evidence to clear his name, hell be given, what is it, $20 million in diamonds? Plus hell get to watch Adrian put a bullet through his own head. Nice deal. He takes it.

The larger prison

So how else does the U.S. version differ from the Korean version? Well, the owner of the private jail, Park there and Chaney here (Samuel L. Jackson), isnt tortured by teeth extraction; instead, Joe cuts out bits of his neck and literally pours salt in the wounds. Theres less back-and-forth with him, too. Park and his men keep turning up, Chaney less so.

The backstory of the villain (Adrian/Lee Woo-jin) is also different. Korean version: Lee had sex with his sister at school, Ou Dae-su saw it, told his friend, who told others, and on and on until there was scandal and suicide. So Ou Dae-su, a despicable man, suffers for a crime he didnt commit. U.S. version: Joe witnesses sex, yes, but between the sister and an older man, who turned out to be the father. Joe didnt know that then, but he still spread the story, and the girl was still hounded, and eventually the entire family, happily engaging in incest with the father, was forced to flee to Luxemburg, where Daddy finally lost it and killed them all. Adrian was only wounded.

Now before I go on to other changes, let me say, emphatically, to anyone who hasnt seen theKorean version: Go watch it. Now. Its streaming on Netflix. If you keep reading this, you will discover one of the great twist endings in movie history. It will be like knowing what Rosebud was. So please, if you havent seen the movie yet, leave.

Are we good? Dont say you havent been warned.

Another difference is the way the new Oldboy presents what happened to Joe/Ous 3-year-old daughter. Korea: He gets a slip of paper saying she was adopted by a couple in .... was it Switzerland? Shes out of the picture. In the U.S. version, we see her on television over and over again. She keeps showing up on one of those crappy unsolved crime shows, which Joe keeps watching while imprisoned. She grows to be a beautiful 23-year-old cellist. Why this change? One: American children dont get adopted abroad. Two: the greater subterfugeand it is subterfugeis there less to fool Joe than to fool us.

Except ... One of the things I liked about the Korean version is that I suspected briefly who Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong) was. He should be careful, I said to Patricia. That girl is his daughters age. She could be his daughter. Im careful this way. Im good with math. But the thought went away. It flashed in my head, and the story picked up, and I stopped thinking about it.

This has happened to me a couple of times watching movies: flashing on the answer, losing it in the story, and thenboomthere it is. When I first saw The Crying Game, I thought maybe the dude was a lady; then it went away; then there it was. With Robert Altmans Nashville, I felt a vibe of assassination. I dont know why. But then it went away. Then boom. Its almost a kind of subconscious foreshadowing. Its one of those mysteries of movies, and if you have it you dont want to mess with itits actually more effective, more resonant, than completely fooling your audiencebut in the new Oldboy they mess with it. Since the subterfuge is greater, I cant imagine anyone new to the story engaging in this kind of subconscious foreshadowing.

In both versions, by the way, the villain tells the hero he asked the wrong question: Not why did I imprison you but why did I let you go? But heres a better question: Why did I let you go after 15/20 years? The length of time, it turns out, is the whole point.

Parks Oldboy is a great revenge fantasy because the revenge isnt extracted by the man who was imprisoned but by the man who imprisoned him. And the 15 years isnt the revenge, it simply sets up the revenge. The 15 years is prelude. Enough time has to pass to allow the revenge to happen: to make Ou guilty of the crime that sent Lee Woo-jins sister to her death: incest. Thats brilliant. Equally brilliant, equally painful, is Ous reaction. He grovels and acts the dog. He literally cuts out his own tongue to please the man who imprisoned him so he wont tell the daughter what really happened. The dream has become a nightmare; and unlike Ous imprisonment, it wont ever end.

The U.S. version screws this up, too. Josh Brolin is a good actor but he cant grovel. And Joe certainly doesnt cut out his own tongue. Instead, even as Adrian kills himself, Joe takes the diamonds, gives most to Marie along with a carefully worded farewell note, and the rest goes to Chaney so hell lock up Joe for the rest of his life. Joe is now his own imprisoner. And he smiles at the camera.

Its not a bad end. It recalls long-held prisoners who want the comfort of the jail cell again. But it doesnt resonate the way the Korean version resonates.

Recidivism

I think the biggest mistake in Spikes version was losing the dream/nightmare quality of the Korean film, the horror/comic fable of it all. This version takes itself a little too seriously. Which I guess is what you do when you remake a classic. But it doesnt serve the final product.

Or maybe it does. We still have the original version, after all, and the U.S. version, despite the talent involved, is no competition. It will fade, disappear from view, leaving only the Korean classic. Thats the one people should see anyway.