Spike Lee’s Oldboy remake now officially coming to America

With a distribution deal now officially in place, it looks like Spike Lee's worrying remake of Korean thriller Oldboy is officially on track.

When it was first announced that Spike Lee would be directing an English-language remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, fans of the film were understandably worried. The original film was, quite simply, a masterpiece. It’s a tragedy that’s almost Shakespearian in quality, and every element of the film, from the actors to the set design to the special effects, is perfectly designed to tell this harrowing tale. Plus, it contains what may be the most viscerally impressive fight scene ever committed to film. In short, it’s a great movie that works brilliantly on a number of levels, and honestly, it seems unlikely that anyone, Spike Lee included, could do a better job with the story than Park Chan-wook.

Of course, the original Oldboy had one glaring flaw as far as Hollywood is concerned: subtitles. No matter how great a film is you just can’t expect American audiences to seek out a movie that forces them to read. The Constitution guarantees us all the right to be as illiterate and lazy as we’d like, and that goes along nicely with our collective desire to use our brain meat as little as possible. Yes, it’s a depressing point, but you can’t really deny its validity: How many foreign-language movies have been actual, legitimate hits here in America?

With the assumption that we’ve impressed upon you readers that this remake is potentially a very bad, depressing idea, on to today’s news. According to The Hollywood Reporter, FilmDistrict snapped up the US distribution rights for Lee’s version of Oldboy at the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival. Given that FilmDistrict co-founder Peter Schlessel has an executive producer credit on the film, this agreement isn’t entirely surprising, but it is something of a final nail in the coffin of hope that somehow Lee’s Oldboy might not be made. This movie is happening people, and according to THR the production starts shooting a mere month from now.

So, now that pessimism is utterly fruitless, we may as well make the best of this imminent situation. As much as the remake itself seems like the very definition of a cynical, money-driven Hollywood decision, we do like some aspects of the idea. Specifically, that Josh Brolin has been cast to portray protagonist Oh Dae-Su (or whatever he’s called in the American version; probably Bill or Steve). While we’re unconvinced that Brolin can trump the performance given by Min-sik Choi in the complex lead role, we do enjoy everything we’ve seen him in, and are quite curious to see how he will interpret the character. Likewise, when we heard that Samuel L. Jackson would be joining the cast, our excitement for the film greatly increased. Not because we think Jackson’s presence somehow validates this remake’s existence, but simply because Mr. Jackson is entertaining in any movie. We could watch that guy read a phone book, as long as he occasionally drops a few angry F-bombs along the way.

While we continue to wait for the studios to offer up a release date for this project, we’d like to recommend that you all visit your favorite Netflix device and watch the original, 2003 version of Oldboy. It was recently added to the service’s instant streaming option, and it’s absolutely worth two hours of your Friday afternoon.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Spike Lee adds Samuel L. Jackson to Oldboy remake

Another name has been added to the roster of Spike Lee's English-language remake of Oldboy: Samuel L. Jackson.

Depending on your personal feelings toward Spike Lee’s English-language remake of Chan-Wook Park’s cult classic revenge flick Oldboy, the following news will either be phenomenal, or will only lightly dent your cynical rejection of any auteur’s attempts to one-up Park. Either way, Samuel L. Jackson is now a part of the movie’s cast.

The LA Times reports:

Jackson has come on board for a small but critical part in the new film, according to a person close to the production who was not authorized to talk about it publicly. The actor will play the man who is being tortured by the hero (Brolin) in a key revenge scene.

Fans of the original will remember the scene as perhaps the most visceral and disturbing of the film. Protagonist Dae-su Oh exacts vengeance on a man who once guarded him by extracting his teeth one-by-one with the claw end of a hammer.

The LA Times has a good point: It’s hard to forget that scene, yet the report then goes on to state that Spike Lee’s version won’t feature the forced dental work. “The new film, which begins shooting this fall in Louisiana and New York, won’t go with the tooth removal, instead inflicting a different kind of torture (we won’t spoil it here, but it’s plenty painful).” Given the numerous ways to torture a person we have to assume that there is something out there as painful as having one’s teeth plucked out with a claw hammer, but honestly we’re having trouble imagining what that might be. Thoughts on how Mr. Jackson might meet his end in the Americanized Oldboy?

Alongside word that Samuel L. Jackson has joined the Oldboy cast, the Times also points out that the film has enlisted the talents of Bruce Hornsby to compose the film’s score. Hornsby has worked with Lee on a number of projects in the past including “basketball documentary Kobe Doin’ Work and the auteur’s new Red Hook Summer,” so his addition isn’t that surprising, though it is odd to hear Hornsby claim that his score wouldn’t necessarily be dark.

“I’m working on a few things and I’ll send them to Spike soon,” he said. “The ‘D’ word has been spoken to me by him,” the musician added, referring to a dark tone. “But I think the score will also run the gamut.”

If any of you who have seen the original, 2003, Korean version of Oldboy can imagine it with a score that is anything other than dark, you’ve got a better imagination than we do. Without spoiling the film’s plot — if you haven’t seen it, please rectify that immediately; it’s fantastic and currently available on Netflix — we can safely say that it deals with some very dark, disturbing themes and while it doesn’t wallow in its characters’ depravity, it is a very dark film. Unless Spike Lee is changing huge swaths of the movie to match his artistic vision, a score that is anything other than “dark” doesn’t make much sense.

Yes, we’ve still got our fingers crossed that Lee isn’t making massive changes to the existing Oldboy plot. Call it wishful thinking.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com