New Life In Old Boy?: The Remake with a Right to Live

For the better part of the last five years, there has been rumblings on one level or another about remaking  Chan-wook Park's 2003 film Oldboy. Now nearly everyone I know (if not everyone) who has seen the film, has fallen into a range with the film from "Really Liked" to "a Modern Classic:" I fall into the later of these two categories, and often find myself re-watching Dae-su's arduous adventure. So when in the past Hollywood bandied around pairings like Fast and the Furious director Justin Lim with Paul Walker, Steven Spielberg and star Will Smith, or David Lynch featuring Betty White in the title role. (Enough already people, we know White is a national treasure, but seriously.) Lead character Dae-su says in the film, " Even though I'm no more than a monster - don't I, too, have the right to live?" In this case, the reanimated creature known as the Hollywood remake might just have a right to life.

Now comes the news that the new hotness changing the title slightly to the spaced out Old Boy, casting Josh Brolin in the lead, and putting Spike Lee behind the camera. To this I say, do it. Lee proved in 2006 with Inside Man that he could handle a tense dramatic story that still contained a fair amount of action, and, as usual with Lee's film's, it was incredibly well composed visually. The same can be said of 2008's Miracle at Santa Anna, but Spike Lee goes WWII didn't work out as well on the screen or at the box office. In recent years, he's worn a documentarian's hat more often than not, but I have full faith that he could do the story justice. The only thing that gives me pause is the script by Thor, The Cell, and I Am Legend, Mark Protosevich, who apparently is also penning the unnecessary Jurassic Park IV.  Protosevich strikes me as a hired gun, and it seems an odd base for the film unless he sticks to a strict adaptation.

Now let me get back to the film's star, Josh Brolin. While Brolin goes back all the way to The Goonies for me, it's been in recent years that he's really come into his own as an actor. With turns in No Country for Old Men, Planet Terror, W., Milk, and True Grit, Brolin has been on a roll (duds Wall Street:Money Never Sleeps  and Jonah Hex not withstanding.) If there's any actor out there right now that  I would be more happy about filling Min-sik Choi's shoes (and wild hair), it's Brolin. All one has to do is watch the emotional depths he plumbs in No Country to see that he's the right man for the job.

So right about now you're probably wondering when this is going to turn and I'm going to reveal this support for a classic film being remade as a ruse. Well, I hate to disappoint, but it's not going to happen. There's still plenty of time for this all to blow up or go away, but for once I'm not going to be the naysayer. For years I've been filled with dread with it comes to this remake, but, for once, Oldboy gets to be associated with hope for a change.

Check out the trailer for the original if you haven't seen the flick, and let your mind explore the possibilities.