Oldboy

Thanks to a suspenseful story with an immediate hook that proves just as irresistible ten years later, Spike Lee's remake of Korean director Park Chan-wook's twisted masterpiece "Oldboy" kicks into gear soon enough and moves along amoothly enough not to bore at any point. Then ew version hardly registers an impact as visceral and harrowing though, mostly because, for all its awesome posters and promising trailers, the movie is not only utterly tone-deaf in terms of score but also looks curiously drab as well, despite the abundance of violence and provocative blood splatters. The spectacularly sleazy look of the original, which instantly gave it an out-of-this-world feeling of manic surrealism and propelled it to such visual extremities to match the perversity of the situation, is watered down to something stylish but mute, drearily average. Only a couple of group fight scenes are choreographed with cartoonish fluidity and psychotic glee to even approach a level of sustained cinematic intensity.

With a story as crazy as this, some form of self-aware loopiness might be necessary, whether in direction or in performance. It seems that only Sharlto Copley has grasped this. His portrayal of the androgynous villain is a riot, if also turning a bit sappy near the end.