Lee serves up shocks in ‘Oldboy’ remake

In the opening scenes of “Oldboy,” alcoholic ad man Joe Doucett loses a key client because he can’t stop hitting on the client’s girlfriend, then descends into an epic bender that leaves him curled up on the pavement like just another piece of New York trash.

For some, this would be the proverbial rock bottom. But for the distinctly unappealing antihero played by Josh Brolin, the worst is yet to come.

“Oldboy” is Spike Lee’s anticipated-slashdreaded remake of the ultraviolent 2003 thriller by Korean director Park Chan-wook. Although the central plot and its gut-punching twist remain the same, the two films are actually quite different.

After his blackout binge, Joe awakes in what looks like a seedy hotel room but turns out to be a private prison. As much as he pounds on the walls, he’s given no explanation, but a television provides a tenuous link to the outside world. No comfort there:

Director:

For fans of the Quentin Tarantino school of grisly, outre noir, Lee’s take on “Oldboy” has a lot to offer, including a titillating mystery, uncounted physical and psychological shocks that shouldn’t be spoiled in a review, and a swaggering, cursing Samuel L. Jackson in a blond Mohawk.

Surprisingly, the movie doesn’t bear much of the stylistic stamp we’ve come to expect of Lee, who’s in his generic journey- man mode here. But aside from a satisfyingly clever new direction in the denouement, what distinguishes the remake from the original is its cartoonishness. This is evident in the two villains so annoyingly overplayed by Jackson and South African actor Sharlto Copley, but also in the Batman hero-

FILMDISTRICT Josh Brolin plays the alcoholic, unappealing antihero in "Oldboy." ics of the fight sequences. Although the first “Oldboy” wasn’t exactly an exercise in realism, the story of human suf fering that it told was palpable and overwhelming. That Lee’s...