Spike Lee Chosen to Dumb-Down Cult Classic for American Audiences

Spike Lee is currently in talks to helm the unnecessary remake of Park Chan-wook’s brilliant 2003 revenge flick Oldboy. Lee hasn’t made a feature film since Miracle at St. Anna, which was met with mostly negative reviews and was likely overlooked for his mild spat with Clint Eastwood over the latter’s depiction (or lack thereof) of black soldiers in Letters to Iwo Jima. The original film is probably pretty close to Lee’s usual milieu: it’s gory, tense and has a twisted moral dilemma at its end.

Honestly, this is a big shrug for me. I’m a huge fan of Chan-wook’s original and don’t see anything that needs updating. I return to it every now and again and there is nothing about it that needs finessing into a better product. Oldboy is a film that will remain defiantly un-commercial until the end of time. What Hollywood thinks it’s going to do with it here (aside from dumb it down and turn it into a stupid Hostel-like summertime violence porn B-movie) is beyond me.

On the other hand, it also marks a disturbing trend of American filmmakers taking brilliant foreign films and remaking them in their own image. Did we need an American (read: in English) version of Let the Right One In? The answer to that is no. And I’d posit there that we also do not need a new version of Oldboy, either. That is unless Spike Lee puts his personal touches on this to make it something truly special (which he is capable of) but otherwise we shouldn’t hold our breath on this one.

If you’re not familiar with the original Oldboy you probably should go queue it up on Netflix or whatever and come back when you’re done.

(source: ScreenRant.com)