Will Smith and Steven Spielberg were on the same page in the 2000s. After finishing licking his wounds from 1999's “Wild Wild West,” Big Willie was hungry to prove himself as a stage actor. With a one-for-them, one-for-me mentality, Smith earned her first two acting Oscars for “Ali” and “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Nodding his head like Agent J, Mike walks the streets of Miami again as Lowry. Anchored on the big screen in Richard Matheson's apocalyptic sci-fi horror “I Am Legend,” playing a tough, hard-drinking superhero, even his tentacles began to get a little darker and heavier along the way. In “Hancock.”
Meanwhile, Spielberg spent the first decade of the 21st century redefining his work. In fact, there are very few things he didn't try during this period, from creating noisy, chaotic visions of the not-too-distant future to coming-of-age stories to light comedies. And yet honest in their feelings (and even, at least by Spielberg's standards). Even if you look at the films he made in the 2000s (“Memoirs of a Geisha,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” and “Big Fish”), you get a portrait of an artist eager to spread his wings and truly distinguish himself. himself from his work.
“Oldboy” was a far cry from anything Smith or Spielberg had done. So when the pair began planning a remake of the source material of Park San-wook's stylish 2003 Korean revenge film (the '90s Japanese manga “Old Boy” by writer Karon Tsuchiya and illustrator Nobuki Minekishi) , it made some sense and that's how I felt. It could even become the next “The Departed” (that is, the best American remake of the famous international film by the Hollywood titan). However, it's possible that Smith and Spielberg's “Oldboy” would have been better off never having come, considering what happened after Spike Lee took the reins.
Oldboy Spike Lee is no joint (literally).
Park's “Oldboy” follows a well-to-do businessman who has been inexplicably imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years and is suddenly freed to hunt down his captor. The certain social anxiety of having unknowingly hurt someone or been complicit in their suffering is something almost everyone can relate to in our long-standing modern online world. In the 2000s, many Americans were experiencing a completely different environment as they tried to understand the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and how their government's previous actions had contributed to them. Surely that question was at the center of Spielberg's mind at the time he was directing films like “The War of the Worlds” and especially “Munich.”
This may have been the impetus behind Spielberg's desire to reimagine “Oldboy.” He and Smith left the project in 2009 after DreamWorks failed to reach a deal for the rights to the original manga. Both were eventually replaced by Spike Lee and Josh Brolin, who showed promise along with the theme. Who better to tell a story about a man with lots of money and a comfortable life who is forced to violently police his privilege than the director of “Do the Right Thing”? Unfortunately, those who opposed attempting to Americanize “Oldboy” were quickly vindicated by the film's disappointing critical reception (39% on Rotten Tomatoes) and dismal box office returns ($5.2 million at the worldwide box office on a budget of $30 million).
However, it doesn't have to be that way. Park's “Oldboy” is a strange creature full of gruesome and twisted moments, but it shows great compassion for its deeply flawed protagonist and antagonist. Even Hammer's famous one-shot hallway fight subverts the usual action sequences seen in most revenge films (with its objective camera perspective and Jo Yong-wook's melancholic score to tone down violence). It is credibly Lee's longest and, presumably, before him, the close initial cut was a powerful weapon in re-editing his stories by the film's producers. The result is a superficial reinvention of the park classic, very similar to the film version of Hammer Fight. Not surprisingly, Lee removed the “A Spike Lee Joint” label from a film he directed.
