I will start my review by saying that I never saw the original South Korean Oldboy film. My intention was seeing the original before seeing this american remake or even thinking if I wanted to see the remake or not because all of the negative comments about this new one. The thing is, I won tickets for the premiere and as a huge addict in films I couldn't refuse it. Many people told me not to see this despite not having seen the original but man, it's stronger than me!
The story of this film JEEZ! What an amazing story! But I have to admit that one of the things that I am certain (and from hearing the reactions of some people after the film finished) is that for more amazing that this story can be, unfortunately this film make it a little predictable. At the middle of the film I was already suspecting how it would end and in the original film (as you all say) the perfect pacing and the perfect atmosphere will keep you completely blank about what will happen until the very last minute.
Josh Brolin wasn't entirely bad for the role, he was intense and emotional but in my point of view he hadn't all of the intensity required for that role and he hadn't all of the emotion required for made me feel totally heartbroken for that poor father that learned a life lesson in the worst possible way.
Elizabeth Olsen wasn't bad, she is a promissing actress and Shalrto Copley is a good villian! He surprised me as a villian earlier this year on Elysium and he surprised me again. I think he has all of the creepiness required of this kind of characters.
Overall, I can't say that it was a horrible film because for me, mostly because of the shocking story, it was a surprise and I enjoyed. Although, some things didn't worked well for me.
After all I think it was better for me not watch the original film before because I had nothing to compare. Now I am still very curious to see the original Oldboy and take my conclusions.
Many of you might criticize my rate about it but I can't lie. It entertained me and I was totally stunned by the story.
What a waste of a film. Utterly unnecessary. It is the original film hollowed out and stripped of its core. The plot is beat by beat but removed of meaning, and every change is for the worse. This cut was severely edited and cut down from Lee's original three hour cut, but the changes seen in this cut do not inspire hope that his original vision was much better. The original Oldboy used hypnosis to help explain the sudden romance. Here it's just 'we engineered her to have daddy issues'??? The hallway scene is a mess, even the extended version, with Brolin being more of a superman than a desperate man using the constrained environment to his advantage and still only barely surviving. Speaking of, Brolin is nowhere near Choi Min-sik's level. In every form and every element this film is inferior and inert, and there's just no reason to bother with it.
What a poor excuse of a movie
Chan-Wook Park > Spike Lee
7/10 - not too bad, in fact quite entertaining.
Wow, they truly did fuck this up. This is not only worse than the original in every conceivable way, but it's just plain bad. All the subtlety, uniqueness, and creativity on display in the original is nowhere to be found here. The action is considerably worse, the dialogue is awful, and the villain is horrendously laughable and dumbed down. Even the acting in this version sucks. Josh Brolin plays a character who is much different from Oh Dae-Su in the original, and neither his performance nor his character inspire all that much sympathy for what we see him going through.
If you haven't seen the original, then I could see you having an okay time with this, simply due to the 'what the fuck' nature of certain reveals and twists. But as a film, it's not good, and as a remake, it's an atrocious bastardisation of Park Chan-wook's masterpiece from 2003. Do yourself a favour and watch the original. Don't sully your soul with this trash.
Good lord, people are such haters. You'd think by a lot of the reviews here this movie wasn't good. In fact, it's a great movie. It's just like when book nerds complain the movie isn't better than the book, yeah but what's your real point? One's a movie, one's a book. In this case it's a remake of a movie that was Korean. I haven't seen the original, and I don't care to because it's just my preference that I like watching movies where I'm not reading subtitles the whole time, so I'm glad I got to see this story and this movie and couldn't give a flying fuck about the original or if it was or wasn't better than it.
Josh Brolin saves this action remake from being a total waste, but the only ones who will enjoy this version are those who never saw the Korean original, which towers over this pale copy in every way.
The original one was better, but this one is enjoyable too
It's not THAT bad for being a remake...
A good movie, Elizabeth Olsen made it even better :)
Not even close to be as good as the original one. And even if it was an original production, I'm affraid I would have to say that this isn't a great movie at all.
Never seen the original , this movie was awesome. Period.
I agree with most of the coments here. Not bad. But if you have seen the original. Then don't expect to be satisfied. I am not one for corean movies but the original of this movie is a masterpiece.
I wanted to dislike this movie and simply write it off as a unneccesary remake, but the truth is I can't. Although I still think the Korean original is way better, this isn't as bad as I initially thought it was going to be.
simply put, "the fakest" movie i've ever seen.
This movie was really something. This type of revenge should teach a lot of bullies in schools a valuable lesson. I have to say, I really enjoyed this one, I didn't expect that ending at all.
I liked it better than the original.
Pretty good and fairly accurate to the original. Original is still better. Still a total mindfuck of an ending, geez
My bias: I'm not the biggest Oldboy fan and prefer Lady Vengeance to it but I would obviously not pass to see what America would do with the property. I also only saw 25th Hour from Spike Lee's filmography because frankly he seems like an arrogant hack to me (whose hypocrite standards on racism show once again in the movie).
The important question: Should you seek out this remake over the original?`No - Fucking - Way.
While the movie follows the original more or less it does so very clumsy. They failed to make the movie engaging and not only shortened it's runtime but turned the ending into a fucking Comedy thanks to the ridiculous accent and costume design on Sharlto Copley. While the beginning is not that bad, everything after our guy is set free seems to have been lost on Lee. This comes very apparent once the terrible, terrible, CG blood comes into play. It looked so shit I was completley taken out of the scene. They even managed to add in the worst shotgun wounds ever later on (for important enough scenes). The final nail in the coffin is the canon hallway scene. Instead of capturing it's feel they were busy trying to one-up the original by making it play out on more than one level. The thing is, even in the original it isn't necessarily realistic but it still setup a lot better than the broad hallway where armies of cookie-cutter gangster stereotypes storm in to take turns on getting beaten up. Funny enough they do not show any blood until the elevator arrives at ground level despite being hard hitting wounds in bright light and somebody tell me how it is that in such a huge crowd of gangsters, in the US, not a single one of them carries a gun.
Seriously, don't bother with this. It's bland and a remake, -1 points for that.
It was actually 20 years. Great movie!
This is a reasonably good re-make. See it if you haven't seen the original!
Shout by lordfiShBlockedParent2014-02-12T20:54:09Z
unnecessary remake, skip it, especially if you seen the original