Comment by danso
12 years ago
Whew...I thought this was going to be an indictment of the Oldboy remake. Sure, the original was great, but I was interested in how an American director would handle the material.
That said, this was probably not the kind of controversy Spike Lee needs attached to this project.
side note: Roger Ebert's raving review of Oldboy was what got me to watch the original Oldboy and that spurred a whole new appreciation of independent foreign films for me:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2005
Would've loved to see what he thought about this one, though Ebert's successor only gave the remake 3 stars
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2013 http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2013
The entire vengeance trio is amazing, but I actually like Sympathy for Lady Vengeance the most. Park Chan-Wook's I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK is good too. You should check out Battle Royale if you liked Oldboy.
Funny, I preferred Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, much more grounded and less stylized.
I don't really see any parallels between Battle Royale and Oldboy. You might check out The Chaser and Yellow Sea, though.
That's funny, I thought Mr. Vengeance was the best...artistically...whereas Lady Vengeance was the "safest" of the trio. Mr. Vengeance is astounding in its depths...however, it's not a movie I'd ever put in just for fun. In fact, I can't remember re-watching it after the first couple of times I saw it.
The controversy already started when we heard that Spike Lee (!), the amateur who doesn't even know the simpliest technical film skills got the rights.
A similar controversy arose when M. Night Shyamalan sat on the rights for "Life of Pi" for a few years, but was ultimately replaced by Ang Lee. The only one who could master such a job.
With the Oldboy remake it was clear from the beginning that it would lead to a desaster, but apparently the studio owed Spike Lee a big favor.