Oldboy (2013)

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Movie
German title Oldboy
Original title Oldboy
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2013
length 104 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Spike Lee
script Mark Protosevich
production Spike Lee,
Roy Lee ,
Doug Davison
music Roque Baños
camera Sean Bobbit
cut Barry Alexander Brown
occupation

Oldboy is an American thriller from 2013 . It is a remake of the 2003 South Korean thriller of the same name , which is itself based on the Japanese manga Old Boy by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi . Directed by Spike Lee and written by Mark Protosevich . The film premiere was on November 11, 2013 in New York City . Josh Brolin , Elizabeth Olsen and Samuel L. Jackson can be seen in the leading roles .

action

In 1993, advertising manager Joe Doucett botched a meeting with potential client Daniel Newcombe by turning on his girlfriend. He then goes to his friend Chucky's bar and gets drunk. On the way home he sees a woman with a yellow umbrella, after which he passes out.

He wakes up in an isolated hotel room and finds out he is trapped. His kidnappers provide him with toiletries and give him sparse Chinese food. Through television, he learns that his ex-wife was raped and murdered and that his daughter Mia was adopted. Joe is charged as the prime suspect. After he is prevented from suicide, he will be imprisoned for the next 20 years. He plans his revenge by making a list of people who had a reason to imprison him, most notably Daniel Newcombe as the prime suspect. He also trains and teaches himself boxing while watching TV.

In 2013, he sees the adult Mia on TV. During an interview, she said she would forgive him if he showed up. Suddenly he is drugged and wakes up in a box in a field with a cellphone, money and the letters he wrote to Mia in his cell. He sees the woman with the yellow umbrella again and follows her to the nearby clinic. There he meets Marie Sebastian, a nurse. She wants to help him, but he refuses, but takes her card anyway. He goes to his old friend Chucky and tells him the whole story. They find out that Newcombe was killed in a plane crash. Together they research the names on his list on the Internet, but discover that they are all innocent. After Chucky goes to bed, Joe faints from malnutrition.

Chucky finds him the next day and calls Marie because Joe has her card in his hand. She takes care of Joe and reads his letters to Mia. With Marie's help, Joe finds the Chinese restaurant that provided the food that he was served with during his imprisonment. There he follows a man to the abandoned factory where he has been imprisoned. Joe tortures Chaney, the owner, until the latter gives him a tape on which a conversation is recorded in which Chaney discusses the conditions of Joe's imprisonment with a stranger. While fighting Chaney's henchman, Joe is stabbed in the back with a knife. In Chucky's bar, Joe meets the stranger and his bodyguard Haeng-Bok, the woman with the yellow umbrella who kidnapped Mia.

The stranger makes a suggestion to Joe: If Joe is able to decipher his identity and the reason for his imprisonment within 46 hours, he will not only release Mia, but he will also give Joe proof of his innocence and give him diamonds reward of $ 20 million. He also promises to shoot himself and let Joe watch. After the stranger leaves, Joe storms into Marie's house to save her from Chaney and his men who are about to rape her. Chaney prepares to torture Joe when he receives a call from the stranger who offers Chaney money if he releases Joe. Chaney agrees.

Marie recognizes the stranger's ringtone as the theme song from Evergreen Academy, a private school Joe attended. He drives with Marie to the house of his former headmistress. While Marie distracts her, Joe sneaks out the back door to go through his senior year book. Using a photo, he can recognize the stranger as Adrian Doyle Pryce and passes the name on to Chucky, who then searches the Internet. Joe also remembers seeing Adrian's sister Amanda having sex with an older man in the school's greenhouse and spreading the discovery throughout the school. It was later found that the man was Arthur, the father of Adrian and Amanda, with whom he had incestuous relationships. To avoid the humiliation, Arthur moved the family to Luxembourg, but ultimately could not live with the situation. Arthur then shot his wife and Amanda, tried to kill Adrian and eventually committed suicide. Now Adrian wants to take revenge for the loss of his family. Chucky confirms the stranger is Adrian Pryce and tries to call Joe. Adrian overhears the conversation, however, and strangles Chucky after he calls Adrian's sister a whore.

Joe hides Marie in a motel where they sleep together while Adrian watches her with a camera. Joe then goes to Adrian's penthouse, kills Haeng-Bok, and answers Adrian's questions. Adrian congratulates Joe, gives him the diamonds, and brings him to Mia. Then he shows Joe a studio where the show Joe watched in prison was filmed, revealing that everything was fake. Joe sees Mia happily playing her cello in another room. Adrian reveals that "Mia" is an actress he has paid for and that Marie is actually Joe's daughter, whose name and identity Adrian has changed over the past 20 years. Horrified and desperate at this realization, Joe begs Adrian to kill him, but Adrian refuses. He wants Joe to experience this moment so that he can really understand what Adrian lost through the death of his family. Now that he has got his revenge, Adrian keeps his last promise and shoots himself in front of a visibly shaken Joe. He writes Marie a letter in which he says that they can never meet again and that he loves her. He leaves her all but a few of the diamonds that he gives Chaney to lock him up again.

production

The film was shot in New Orleans , Louisiana . The production cost of the film was $ 30 million, but at the box office it only grossed about $ 4.86 million, of which about $ 2.19 million was in the United States. In financial terms, the remake was a failure.

Spike Lee announced that the film was originally 140 minutes long but was cut to 105 minutes for theatrical release. The additional scenes contained in the original version consisted mainly of interactions between people and were used for character development. Elizabeth Olsen didn't know the end of the film until she first saw it during its premiere in New York. Olsen said she has n't been so surprised and shocked by the ending since the movie The Sixth Sense . Josh Brolin expressed his dissatisfaction with the final version of the film in an interview, especially when compared to the original 2003 film.

Allusions

There are several references to Park Chan-wook's version in the film. For example, Joe watches a swimming octopus in an aquarium in a restaurant, which is a bow to the infamous scene from the original. In another scene, Joe is buying a birthday present for his daughter. The girl who works at the stall wears angel wings. In the 2003 film, Oh Dae-Su buys angel wings for his daughter. In addition, in the remake, Joe receives Chucky's severed tongue. In Park Chan-wook's film, the main character cuts off his tongue.

reception

The reviews were mostly mixed. At Metacritic , the film received a Metascore of 49/100 based on 41 reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes , 41 percent of the 138 reviews were positive. In summary, it says there that the film is “appropriately dark and bloody”, but also “disappointingly safe and flat”. Spike Lee's remake would "neither surpass the original," nor add "anything new to his formidable legacy."

The film service said: “A US re-adaptation of a Japanese manga, which is based very closely on the South Korean thriller of the same name by Park Chan-Wook (2003), without attaining its staging virtuosity or emotional impact. The remake looks like a soulless imitation whose cruel violence curdles into an end in itself. "

The judgment of Cinema was more positive : "Spike Lee's" Oldboy "is like the Korean original a guilt-and-atonement drama that draws attention primarily through excessive depiction of violence. [...] But that's not the real crux of the matter. Rather, the resolution of the complicated construct is irritating. When it becomes clear in the end why Doucett had to suffer, the motive for it seems relatively weak. Even if there is some disappointment at the end, the film manages to entertain its viewer in a gripping manner. Conclusion: Largely captivating, exaggeratedly brutal revenge thriller that runs out of breath at the end. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Oldboy . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2013 (PDF; test number: 141 938 K).
  2. ↑ Oldboy - Filming Locations . In: IMDb . Retrieved January 30, 2016.
  3. ↑ Oldboy - Box Office Results . In: Box Office Mojo . Retrieved January 29, 2016.
  4. ↑ a b c d Oldboy - Trivia . In: IMDb . Retrieved January 30, 2016.
  5. ↑ Oldboy Movie Reviews . In: Metacritic . Retrieved January 28, 2016.
  6. ↑ Oldboy Movie Reviews . In: Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved January 20, 2016.
  7. ↑ Oldboy - short review . In: Filmdienst.de . Retrieved January 20, 2016.
  8. ↑ Oldboy - review . In: Cinema.de . Retrieved January 28, 2016.