Directed by Spike Lee. Written by Mark Protosevich. Cast: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Imperioli, Pom Klementieff, James Ransone, Max Casella, Linda Emond, Lance Reddick, Hannah Ware, Richard Portnow, Elvis Nolasco, Rami Malek, Caitlin Dulany, Cinque Lee. (R, 104 mins)
Park Chan-wook's 2003 film OLDBOY was the second part of the director's "Vengeance" trilogy of stand-alone films connected by the common theme of obsessive revenge, coming between 2002's SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE and 2005's LADY VENGEANCE. OLDBOY was the first to be released in the US, in the spring of 2005, and it became an immediate hit with cult and arthouse audiences for its savage violence, stylish direction, and creative set pieces, most notably a long, single-take sequence where the hero takes on an endless hallway full of thugs while armed with just a hammer, plus an instantly-legendary scene where the lead actor eats a live octopus. Anchored by a galvanizing, ferocious performance by Choi Min-Sik and a devastating plot twist near the end, OLDBOY is almost universally considered a modern classic, so an American remake was inevitable. It marks an unusual project for Spike Lee, who's in total director-for-hire mode here, bringing none of his usual style to the proceedings (it's very telling that it's "A Spike Lee Film" and not "A Spike Lee Joint"). After a moderate level of hype in past months, FilmDistrict dumped this on just 500 screens for Thanksgiving with almost no publicity other than star Josh Brolin entering rehab just a few days prior, and both Brolin and Lee voicing their displeasure that the producers took the project away from Lee during post-production, cutting anywhere from 35 to 60 minutes out of it, depending on who's telling the story. This is also noteworthy as FilmDistrict's last release before folding and being absorbed by Focus Features, so it's obvious they're just doing the bare minimum here. As far as American remakes for the subtitle-phobic go, OLDBOY isn't bad. It frequently blunders and miscalculates, but admirably doesn't water-down or sugarcoat the shocking major reveal. Lee and screenwriter Mark Protosevich (THE CELL, I AM LEGEND) also alter the rationale for the villain's actions, and believe it or not, that particular element is even more dark and twisted than in Park's original version.
In 1993, Joe Doucett (Brolin) is an alcoholic, asshole ad exec and deadbeat dad who's late with child support payments and his ex-wife is running out of patience. After losing a lucrative deal when he drunkenly hits on the client's wife, Joe wanders around town in a stupor until he's abducted and held prisoner in a dingy hotel room. There are no windows and he's fed twice a day and given a bottle of vodka. He sees a news report that his ex-wife has been murdered and his DNA is all over the crime scene. Days, weeks, years pass. Every night, gas is released in the room and he passes out. He watches TV (the inaugurations of Clinton and Bush and the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina indicate how much time is passing), befriends a family of mice that's ultimately served to him for dinner, uses the time to quit drinking, clear his head, and exercise obsessively. He writes letters to his daughter Mia--who's been adopted by a new family and, as he learns from a TV show about his wife's murder and his own disappearance, grows up to be a cellist of some repute--vowing to prove his innocence and be a better father when he gets out. He writes an endless list of names of people he's wronged. He watches the inauguration of Barack Obama. After 20 years in this one room with no human contact, he's set free with a smartphone and wallet filled with money as he tries to piece together what happened and who is responsible. He meets Marie (Elizabeth Olsen), a recovering addict who works as a nurse at a free clinic, and after reading his letters to Mia, decides to help him in his quest for answers.
If you've seen Park's OLDBOY, then you know where the primary plot is headed. And yes, Lee stages his own version of the hallway/hammer fight (which was previously ripped off by the forgettable Jude Law sci-fi dud REPO MEN) that goes on longer and is more elaborate but doesn't work as well. Also not working as well is Lee's reliance on what looks like the finest CGI splatter technology that 1997 has to offer (one shotgun blast to the head is just embarrassing). While Choi's performance in Park's film is hard to top, Brolin's level of commitment is undeniably impressive. He both gained and lost weight for the role, then bulked up the muscle (in some scenes, he looks a lot like Brad Davis in MIDNIGHT EXPRESS). While Joe adapts to 2013 life rather quickly (this may have played out more believably in Lee's original cut), Brolin is very good with his halting walk and confusing looks, almost looking like an animal at times. There's even some chance for humor in some of his dialogue, as he incredulously asks Marie "I need to look at the Yellow Pages...where are all the pay phones?" Olsen is charming as the kind-hearted Marie, a damaged soul who sees a strangely kindred spirit in this helpless man who's lost two decades of his life. Where the film's biggest problems arise are with its villains. Samuel L. Jackson has a minor supporting role as the guy overseeing Joe's imprisonment, but he's just an employee. The real antagonist is billionaire Adrian Pryce, played by Sharlto Copley in a performance that can be charitably described as "odd." In the original film, Yu Ji-tae played the villainous Lee Woo-jin as ruthless and mocking. With perfectly-sculpted facial hair and eyebrows, and long, manicured fingernails, Copley plays Pryce as a preening, prissy hybrid of Vincent Price, Dr. Evil, and Paul Lynde. Lee Woo-jin is cold and calculating. Adrian Pryce is an effeminate, over-the-top Bond villain. It doesn't work at all, and while Copley's only doing what he's been directed and scripted to do, his performance is an unmitigated disaster. If I thought Lee watched any Eurotrash flicks at all, I'd swear he had Copley pattern his performance on some of cult actor John Steiner's more colorful turns in gems like SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS.
Lee and Protosevich ditch the original film's hypnotism element, which proves to be another big mistake. By abandoning the hypnotism angle, they create some plausibility issues that Park managed to skate away from--for Pryce's plan to work, a lot of coincidences have to fall perfectly into place. And in compiling his list of those he's harmed, it never occurs to Joe or his childhood buddy Chucky (Michael Imperioli) to think of Pryce? The guy's a billionaire, so it's not like he lives an anonymous life. And Pryce can just walk right into Chucky's bar and Chucky doesn't recognize this billionaire with whom he went to school? And what did Chucky do with his private school education that he's now running a shitty bar? And how does Pryce have a camera set up in the backroom of Chucky's shitty bar? See? Too many things fall perfectly into place. At least in Park's version, you could say "Well, they were hypnotized and programmed to react a certain way when they heard this or saw that." But in Lee's version--at least in its released state, that is-- it's just a string of ludicrously easy trips to Plot Convenience Playhouse.
Brolin's performance makes OLDBOY worth watching, but Lee's film still pales in comparison to Park's original. Given the post-production tinkering and FilmDistrict's eventual dumping of it anyway, it has to be disheartening for the actor to have obviously invested a large amount of mental and physical exertion into his work only to have it go largely unnoticed if not outright dismissed. Choi is an impossible act to follow as the protagonist of OLDBOY, but Brolin does his damnedest to match him and almost makes it. It's too bad the same can't be said for the rest of the film. Unlike some remakes, OLDBOY doesn't insult its source, but it doesn't add much to it, either. Fans of the original will probably find it an interesting curio if nothing else.
Despite plenty of pre-release hype, STOKER, the English-language debut of famed South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook (OLDBOY) only got a limited US release, topping out at 275 screens at its widest. It's not surprising, really: it was never really clear what kind of film it was, Fox had no clue how to sell it, and the title probably led test audiences to expect a vampire movie. It's best to approach STOKER knowing as little as possible. On her 18th birthday, withdrawn outcast India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) discovers her wealthy father Richard (Dermot Mulroney) has been killed in a car accident. India and her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) are joined at their estate by Richard's long-absent younger brother Charles (Matthew Goode), who has been "travelling abroad" and who India never knew about before the funeral. Charles decides to stay, much to the disapproval of motherly housekeeper Mrs. McGarrick (Phyllis Somerville) and his aunt Gwendolyn (Jacki Weaver), both of whom quickly disappear without a trace. Nevertheless, the charming Charles develops flirtatious relationships with both Evelyn and India, forming a bizarre--and murderous--triangle of unrequited lust with the sexually-frustrated mother and the sexually-blossoming daughter. Working from a script by PRISON BREAK star Wentworth Miller, Park's film manages to overcome its often clumsy metaphors and facile symbolism (chief among them India's switch from saddle shoes to sexy high heels--and there's enough lingering close-ups of Wasikowska's feet to guarantee this a spot near the top of Quentin Tarantino's Best of 2013 list) with some truly inspired filmmaking. Park, cinematographer Chung-Hoon Chung, and editor Nicolas De Toth are the real stars of the show here, with endless visual flourishes, brilliant use of sound, color, odd framing, sweeping camera movements, tracking shots, etc. It's like an art-house mix of Hitchcock, De Palma, Argento, and Antonioni wrapped in some soapy Tennessee Williams-inspired gothic potboiler, but never going over the top and never played too broadly by the actors. STOKER is flawed, but it hits much more than it misses, it's genuinely unpredictable, and Park's enthusiastic, inspired filmmaking is positively infectious. (R, 99 mins)
AMERICAN MARY (Canada - 2013)
Twin sisters and Eli Roth protégées Jen & Sylvia Soska wrote and directed this colorful, stylish, but frustratingly empty body-modification horror film that got some inexplicably glowing reviews even from critics outside the usual sycophantic indie horror circles. The scenesters immediately took to it, due in large part to the presence of GINGER SNAPS cult horror star Katharine Isabelle, who brings a sort-of deadpan, Canadian Aubrey Plaza persona to her role as financially-strapped med student Mary Mason. Mary, one of these broke college kids who lives alone in an improbably spacious apartment, finds herself making some quick cash when she applies for a job at a nudie bar and ends up suturing the wounds of some poor schmuck who got the shit beat out of him by the owner (Antonio Cupo). After meeting heavily surgically-altered stripper Beatress (Tristan Risk), who's had 14 surgeries to make her a living embodiment of Betty Boop, Mary becomes a sought-after, off-the-books surgeon and body-modification artist. She puts her skills to more sinister use after she's drugged and raped by one of her instructors (David Lovgren), and holds him captive, performing a variety of operations, ranging from sewing his mouth shut to amputating his arms to hanging him from hooks through his skin. Even with the rape/revenge angle, the Soskas never make Mary's transition from down-on-her-luck student to psycho killer very plausible. The film is intended in part as a gothy homage to David Cronenberg, particularly his 1988 film DEAD RINGERS (an interesting idea, considering the filmmakers), but it just feels like whole chunks of the story are missing. Isabelle is fine in the role, and there's some nice bits of dark, sick humor (Risk's Beatress makeup is both amusing and creepy), but when a snooping detective (John Emmet Tracy) tells Mary that he thinks she's hiding something and she replies "There's really not all that much to me," I can't help but wholeheartedly agree. (R, 103 mins)
THE LAST EXORCISM PART II (US/France/UK - 2013)
The much-mocked title is the least of this pointless sequel's problems. Abandoning the found-footage motif of the surprisingly OK 2010 original (which got a huge boost from Patrick Fabian's performance as a phony preacher faced with very real evil), PART II finds once-possessed Nell Sweetzer (the returning Ashley Bell) taking up residence in a New Orleans halfway house for troubled girls run by the gruff Muse Watson, the guy you call when Kris Kristofferson is out of your price range. The sheltered Nell befriends some of the other girls, gets a job cleaning hotel rooms, and finds a possible romance with a shy co-worker (Spencer Treat Clark), but it's not long before the evil spirit Abalam comes back for more. Of course, it takes director/co-writer Ed Gass-Donnelly 70 of the film's 89 minutes to get there, as the bulk of the film is spent on endless fake scares and scenes of Nell walking around, haunted by visions of her supposedly dead father (Louis Herthum) and being followed by a mysterious figure wearing Tom Cruise's EYES WIDE SHUT orgy mask. Sporting possibly the most asinine ending of any movie this year (which expectedly leaves the door open for PART III), THE LAST EXORCISM PART II is a shameless con job that approaches DEVIL INSIDE levels of audience contempt, which is starting to sum up possession movies in general. We've seen enough. THE EXORCIST is now 40 years old and it's never going to be equaled, let alone topped. So just stop. Please. By the time you get to using a title like THE LAST EXORCISM PART II, it's pitifully obvious that there's no new angles for filmmakers and nothing more of anything resembling entertainment value to offer audiences. (Unrated, 89 mins)
