OLD BOY
review by
ANIZ FILMVALA
*****
STORY.
In 1993, advertising executive
Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin) ruins a meeting with a potential client, Daniel
Newcombe (Lance Reddick), by hitting on his girlfriend. Afterwards, he goes to
a bar owned by his friend Chucky (Michael Imperioli), and gets drunk. On his
way out, Joe spots a woman with a yellow umbrella before being knocked
unconscious.
He awakens
in an isolated hotel room and finds he is a prisoner. His captors provide him
with basic hygiene items and meager portions of Chinese food. Through the TV,
Joe hears he has been framed for the rape and murder of his ex-wife, and that
his daughter, Mia, has been adopted. After being prevented from committing
suicide, Joe obsessively spends the next 20 years planning his revenge,
becoming a skilled boxer by watching televised matches and compiling a list of
everyone who might be responsible for his imprisonment, with Newcombe being the
prime suspect.
In 2013,
Joe watches an adult Mia being interviewed by a TV show called "Unresolved
Mysteries of Crime", and claiming she'd be willing to forgive him if he
returns. Suddenly, he is drugged and awakes in a box in a field, with money and
a cellphone. He spots the woman with the yellow umbrella, whom he chases to a
nearby clinic; there he meets Marie Sebastian (Elizabeth Olsen), a nurse who
offers to help him. Joe refuses help but takes her card. He later visits Chucky
and tells him what happened. He receives a mocking phone call from the
mastermind behind his imprisonment, The Stranger (Sharlto Copley). After
learning Newcombe died in a plane crash, Joe investigates the other names on
his list, and learns they are all innocent. He eventually passes out from
undernourishment and Chucky calls Marie, who gives Joe medical treatment.
Marie
reads the letters Joe has written for Mia, and offers to help him. With her,
Joe is able to locate the restaurant that provided the food he was given in
captivity, and follows a man who arrives to take a large order to an abandoned
factory, which is where he was held captive. Joe confronts the owner, Chaney (Samuel
L. Jackson), and tortures him into giving him a taped conversation in which he
discusses the terms of Joe's imprisonment with The Stranger. Joe then returns
to Chucky's bar, where he meets The Stranger himself, and his bodyguard
Haeng-Bok, the woman with the yellow umbrella, who has kidnapped Mia.
The
Stranger claims that, if Joe is able to discover his real identity and his
motives for torturing Joe, he will not only release Mia, but also give Joe $20
million in diamonds and commit suicide. After The Stranger leaves, Joe rushes
to Marie's house and saves her from Chaney and his men. Marie digitally
identifies The Stranger's ringtone as being the theme song of Joe's college
and, through a yearbook; Joe is able to determine that The Stranger's real name
is Adrian Pryce. Back when they were classmates, Joe saw Adrian's sister Amanda
having sex with an older man and mentioned it to many students at the college.
The man was later revealed to be Adrian and Amanda's father, who was having
incestuous relationships with them both. After this exposure of his actions,
Adrian's father murdered his wife and Amanda, attempted to murder Adrian, and then
committed suicide. Adrian, the sole survivor, blamed Joe and swore revenge
against him.
Joe hides
Marie in a motel, where they have sex, while Adrian finds and kills Chucky. Joe
later goes to Adrian's penthouse and kills all of his men, including Haeng-Bok.
Adrian congratulates Joe on discovering the truth and then reveals
"Mia" is actually an actress on his payroll, and Joe's real daughter
is Marie. Horrified by what Adrian has engineered him to do, Joe begs for
death, but Adrian instead gives him the diamonds and then commits suicide. Joe
writes Marie a letter, stating they can never meet again, and leaves her all
but a few of the diamonds, which he gives to Chaney in exchange for returning
to captivity supposedly for the rest of his life.
CRITIC VIEW.
Director Spike Lee's remake of 2003's Old boy is as viciously
mystifying as the Korean unusual cult movie. The martial arts and violence of
hammer killing sequences are reminiscences of Kill Bill and other Quentin Tarantino movies
A seldom moody and boring thriller on its own provisions, leading
man Josh Brolin manages to get some true to life moments but fails to ratify
the 20 yrs cage trauma one goes all the way through.
This Old boy is another meaningless
restructure of a Korean Acrobat. Merely there are some
footage to be engaged, so risk it on your own
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