Spike Lee's Oldboy is released in cinemas soon. Based on the 2003 South Korean film of the same name, the film is about a man who is kidnapped, and locked up for no apparent reason. Twenty years later (in the case of the remake; fifteen for the original), he is released with no explanation, and so begins his mission to find out who did this to him and why.
Being a fan of the original Park Chan-Wook film, I wasn't exactly jumping for joy when I first heard there was going to be a Hollywood reimagining, or whatever they like to call it. What's wrong with using the word "remake" anyway. Spike Lee likes to call it a "reinterpretation".
Here's the recent red-band trailer for the remake:
When I first heard about it a few years back, I wasn't aware if a director had been attached to the film or not, but I'd also heard that there was talk of going back to the original source material; the Japanese manga, which I understand is quite different to the South Korean film adaptation. This, I thought, could be interesting; it could be something better than just the rehashing of the same scenes and the same ideas of the previous film; a trap that so many remakes seem to fall into, leaving them so disappointing to watch, when they fail to surpass the original.
