It Is The Octopus That Eats Desperate Men

Much like its tortured protagonist and his journey, it could be said the American remake of the 2003 South Korean revenge epic OLDBOY was doomed from its initiation. While many were dismayed but not surprised when talk first surfaced of an English-language adaption of Chan-wook Park's breakout hit, it was likely a curious moment for those same fans when it was announced that it would be directed by longtime firebrand director Spike Lee. Thus, the already skeptical climate this project would have received under normal circumstances by being a remake became a downright minefield of bad press due to the controversial nature of its artistic captain - some of it rather overblown (the process of finding a name actor to co-star with Josh Brolin, the initial lack of a major studio attachment), some of it quite detrimental (artist Juan Luis Garcia calling out the producers' outright theft of his unpaid advertising prototypes and Lee's curt reply of indifference, likely due to his own displeasure with the producers' editing demands, leading to his removal of his longstanding "Joint" designation and well-known 40 Acres & A Mule logo branding). Its release on the Thanksgiving holiday carried a de facto albatross on its neck by opening on only 583 screens nationwide (compared to 1516 for the family drama BLACK NATIVITY, 2572 for the Jason Statham vehicle HOMEFRONT, and 3742 for Disney's FROZEN), resulting in a total opening gross estimate of just over $1 million, and for being the final release for distributor FilmDistrict, whose management and company apparatus are to be fused into rival distributor Focus Features. In short, almost all observers basically declared this film a failure before it even had its first public screenings this past Tuesday evening.

This write-off on the film, figurative and literal, upsets me not just in principle, but in specific to the merits of the finished work. Let me clearly state upfront that Park's adaptation of the otherwise lesser-known late '90's graphic novel is still the better film: its changes to the manga's storyline, its fevered pace of pursuit, its operatic levels of tragedy...as Roger Ebert wrote in his four-star review, "OLDBOY is a powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare." However, and get your torches and pitchforks ready, I feel this new reinterpretation credited to screenwriter Mark Protosevich is the more interesting tale, even though it does not succeed as well as its predecessor. The majority of reviews that have surfaced for Lee's remake essentially carry the same argument for dismissal, saying that for all purposes, it's a note for note copy of the original. Well, to use the parlance of the jazz music that Lee has long championed, it's the notes between the notes you really need to pay attention to in this film.

Need I say we will be dealing in absolute spoilers for both versions?

What initially put me off while watching the new version was the rather extreme unlikeability of Brolin's protagonist Joe Doucett compared to the careless but otherwise nonthreatening air of Choi Min-sik as Oh Dae-su in the original. Both are alcoholics who behave irresponsibly in public and neglect their young daughters on their birthdays, but Dae-su is just a hapless dope, while Doucett is a raging asshole who gets drunk on the job, sexually harasses his assistant, and screams at his estranged wife. As such, the viewer is almost perversely glad to see Doucett get mysteriously imprisoned and isolated from society while they're shocked at the otherwise random jailing of Dae-su. Moreover, when Doucett is freed after 20 years (he spends an extra 5 years in captivity versus the 15 years Dae-su received, probably an appropriate douchenozzle bonus tax), while he has made positive changes like kicking alcohol, getting in shape, and acknowledging the pain he's caused his daughter, he still often behaves like the entitled jerk that he was before his mysterious imprisonment, while Dae-su, just as violent and driven, has a more sympathetic air during his quest. So I can understand if audiences don't feel as invested in his journey, or take any kind of excitement from his numerous battles with the hired hands that stand in the way of his discovery of the truth; it almost seems as if Lee himself doesn't like him either, leading many to suspect it's his passive-agressive way of declaring disinterest in the material.

However, once we finally meet the antagonist, Adrian Pryce (played by Sharlto Copley), I began to get a better inkling of what Lee was really interested in exploring by agreeing to helm this project. Much like his equivalent Lee Woo-jin (played by Yoo Ji-tae) in the original, Pryce seems to have limitless wealth, and is ready to offer a huge amount of it, along with exoneration for the murder of Doucett's wife previously blamed on him, and most importantly, his own suicide, if Doucett can tell him why he caged him for two decades. In both films, it is revealed that a thoughtless incident of youthful voyeurism and slut-shaming by each protagonist led to the death of the antagonist's sister and his desire for revenge. In Park's original, both boys were in high school, and Dae-su is unaware that Woo-jin and his sister were engaged in an incestuous relationship, or that she committed suicide soon after. In Lee's version, both boys (along with another friend, a character in the original manga but omitted from Park's film) are in a much more elite prep school, and this time Doucett unknowingly witnesses Pryce's sister having sex with their father, a moneyed alumnus. It is also revealed the father molested Pryce as well, and after the family relocates to Sweden in the wake of Doucett's rumormongering, the patriarch commits murder-suicide on the entire household, with Pryce as sole survivor. Of all these horrifying revelations, what is the most striking is that as he describes these circumstances, Pryce almost calmly accepts his father's abuse of himself and his sister as normal and acceptable due to the power and respect he commanded by his wealth. Thus, where previously, Woo-jin seeks revenge on Dae-su out of misplaced emotions for his sister, blaming him for the loss of his true love, Pryce, now living under an alias in the wake of his father's rampage, blames Doucett for the loss of his family name and the influence it had carried. And that was where it all clicked for me.

This adaptation of OLDBOY is not meant to be so much a tragedy about the quest for revenge, but a bitter jeremiad about the ingrained structure of white privilege. It's no accident that Doucett, during his captivity, is rankled at seeing the mocking grin of a black concierge on the sarcastic "hotel service" poster in his cell (which comes to life in a hallucination played by the director's brother Cinque Lee), or that the discovery phase reveals his captors to be almost all minorities (led by Samuel L. Jackson) who are ultimately pawns working in the service of an even more powerful white man in Pryce; these are direct confrontations to his pre-captivity image of himself and the world. Moreover, what little he can glean about the world during his 20 years out of it comes from television, and that's no way to have any kind of realistic education about the reality outside. When he's freed from his cell, he's left inside an archaic steamer trunk in an open park, like the artifact from another time that he both metaphorically and literally is. It's quite telling that Doucett drops a quip about THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, and not, say, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION; he doesn't see himself as an innocent man imprisoned, but as an aristocrat dethroned. Even the title gains a different meaning - rather than suggesting the aging of the protagonist in captivity as it did in its original incarnation, "Oldboy" now summons up notions of "the Old Boys Club," entrenched millionaires cackling like Jim Backus and saying things like "Have another martini, old boy!" And, in the icy sociopathy of Pryce, the incestuous nature of dynastic wealth is carried to the harshest possibility. Meanwhile, the two most sympathetic white characters in the film are Chuckie, the former prep school friend of Doucett who has fallen lower on the class ladder but seems much happier with his life, and Marie, a nurse specifically devoted to working with the underprivileged.

Not that this is a completely humorless story, though how much you laugh depends on your own mordant sensibilities. The ongoing references to Doucett's disconnect from modern progress - learning the internet, searching for a Yellow Pages - are effective not just as a tension-breaking aspect of his captivity, but also within the film's theme of affluent men who live in such a bubble they don't know the world has changed around them. While Doucett's surgical flaying of Chaney's neck for information is most gross and horrifying, I must admit I began to imagine this sequence as some sort of subconscious revenge fantasy on actor Jackson by director Lee in regards to the very public fracas over Quentin Tarantino that led to their longtime rift after multiple film collaborations, and chuckled to myself. ("THAT'S for telling Quentin it's okay to use the n-word in his movies! And THAT'S for you saying the n-word all those times in his movies!") And when Pryce reveals that even the television programs Doucett was able to watch in captivity on the ancient TV with the '70's "clicker" remote were often curated or even flat-out faked, my mind was instantly grateful for getting an answer to my wonky question of "How did they get around the analog-to-digital TV transition of 2009?"

A very effective change, in my opinion, is the elimination of post-hypnotic triggering that was a significant element in Park's film, for though it was very effective in bolstering the classical allusions of a hero and heroine unaware of their manipulation or their fate in that film, in this outing, it would have played like a convenient excuse, because Lee and Protosevich insist on Doucett taking responsibility for his bad choices pre-imprisonment, so it is only right that the all-too-predictable manner in which an Alpha male like him would solve his dilemma should create his ultimate downfall. The way in which Pryce has manipulated the lives of Doucett and Marie make hyponsis unnecessary - he has already planted the seeds by depriving one of human touch or kindness, and reinforcing a combination Florence Nightingale/daddy dependence in the other. For those who complain that how would Pryce know that they would fulfill the needs of his master plan, well that's easy: simple human nature. The impulse to help a rattled stranger with severe injuries, a quest for justice, trauma from unexplained attacks. And, of course, having enough money that if the scenario isn't playing as speedily as you would like, contriving some other details in your favor. (Fascinating that, for a story that is often remembered for a man devouring an octopus, few notice that it is the tentacles of a billionaire that, in effect, devours that man.) More important, what previously offered Doucett any sense of advantage over Pryce or his family, whom he didn't even realize existed during his brief interaction with them, were the choices he made, be it to tease and expose their daughter, or to piss away his oppotunities by his alcoholism, or his casual unappreciation of his own family. And Pryce wants to drive home what another ruthless billionaire once opined, that "most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything." Taking advantage of the fact that Doucett has lost 20 years of his life, but he still thinks that he can throw enough punches or dollars at the situation to get to the truth, Pryce lays out a series of moments where he could have done something differently, but chose not to. He could have taken the money that was left in the wallet and fled town, but instead he chased the girl with the yellow parasol and met Marie. He could have called the police on Chaney's bizarre prison/hotel when he found it, but instead he went on a hammer rampage. And he could have politely rebuffed Marie's advances in that hotel room, but instead he gave into his base impulses. As another movie about the framing of a guilty man observed, "Hell is the time you should have walked, but you didn't." Doucett has been manipulated by a man deranged, but he cannot take solace in being forced into bad choices under hypnosis like Dae-su; he made them clean and sober.

And the last major change this movie features from its Korean predecessor that, for me, makes it more interesting (if, keep in mind, not necessarily better), is its resolution. Park's OLDBOY, after the last heartbreaking revelation and the suicide of his enemy, leaves Dae-su self-amputating his tongue and seeking the same hypnotist who induced his fateful triggers to help suppress the memories of the experience, with a reunion between himself and young Mi-do leaving ambiguity as to whether the maneuver was effective. In Lee's telling, after his enemy's death, Doucett uses the significant fortune promised to him by Pryce to pay Cheney to allow him to return to his previous captivity, along with a financial provision for Marie, who will be spared the truth of their connection, but will never see him again. In the wake of everything he has learned about Pryce and about himself, Doucett has determined that he has no place in this society or in the life of Marie, and chooses to spend the remainder of his days isolated from it all, in the hope that things will get better by his absence. In effect, in contrast to Pryce, whose very name suggested all could be bought and controlled, Doucett is finally living in the peaceful gentility his name origin suggests. I can't say if this means that Lee's final statement on rich old white men is to spread the wealth among those who need it (working class, charities, etc) and then get the hell out of the way, but in the case of this one man, he has finally done one deed that, as director, Lee does respect and admire, and believe will finally bring him redemption after a lifetime of near unforgivable acts.

Spike Lee's OLDBOY does not and will never trump, transcend, or escape the shadow of Chan-wook Park's OLDBOY in the manner that, say, John Huston's THE MALTESE FALCON supplanted Roy Del Ruth's earlier production. However, as a stand-alone movie, as a different reading of a familiar story, and as a unit (if not a full-on "joint") of Lee's large body of work, it's a compelling film with something to say, even if for now, nobody wants to listen. I hope it doesn't take 20 years for it to find a hospitable audience.

Can This Movie Be Saved? THE WICKER MAN (2006)

Though I seriously doubt this erratically-published vanity publication will ever reach the availability to salons and hospitals that the Ladies' Home Journal posesses, I am taking a cue from that venerated member of the Seven Sisters, and launching an ongoing series: Can This Movie Be Saved?. A look at well-documented instances of kino adstoj and determining if they were doomed from the pitch meeting, or if the road not taken could indeed have yielded a good movie. Like any great tragedy, often times the truth is that were it not for a fatal wrong turn, one would have a successful work of art instead of a gleaming turd.

We begin with one of the most egregious (and subsequently mercilessly lampooned) instances of widescreen epic fail, Neil LaBute's remake of Robin Hardy's THE WICKER MAN. You can believe everything you've heard about this movie. It's bad. More specifically, considering the talents of LaBute and Nicolas Cage (both of whom I happen to like though I know it's fashionable not to) and the possibilities of the subject matter, it's a big disappointment. The original THE WICKER MAN is still one of the most unsettling movies I've ever seen, and one that should be on the queue of every person who enjoys challenging film. Despite the fact that, strangely, now that the remake is so part of our snark culture, the central surprises of the original are likely all too obvious, it is still a showcase of great performances by Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward, and Britt Ekland, and Anthony Shaffer's screenplay offers much to study in staging, plot turns, and building dread.

While no doubt the notion of remaking the film was borne from an ongoing onslaught of remakes that nobody but penny-pinching studio development people asked for, in this case, it wasn't such a bad idea, because LaBute's previous work, loved or loathed, were original and punchy and with a point of view. It's the difference between a genuine visionary rethinking an established work than, say, the hacky remakes of WHEN A STRANGER CALLS or THE FOG. Note that this was released in the same year as THE DEPARTED, Martin Scorsese's just-as-personalized remake of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's INFERNAL AFFAIRS, and for whatever problems some may have with Scorsese's film, most agree it is a remake with something new to offer the familiar material.

And here there be spoilers for both WICKER MAN films...

I was initially intrigued with LaBute's central idea, replacing the primary conflict of Christianity vs. Paganism from the original film with a more sex-based impasse -- man-made law (in Cage's cop) vs. "natural" law (in the rural Summersisle residents). And I also liked the increased presence of main female character Willow, who in the previous film is essentially just a lust object, giving her a private conflict: bond of spouse (Willow as fiancee) vs. bond of family (Willow as matriarchal daughter). There are a few moments in this film when, in the course of the grand deception, and especially at the fiery end, you can see tinges of regret in Willow's face, acknowledging that at one time she felt something for her intended victim. And as silly as they look, the recurring uses of bees, honeycomb patterns, bears, etc, at least shows some creativity on the part of LaBute. Clearly he had been thinking about presenting a unique visual environment to stage his story.

However, the first huge problem, which has affected numerous remakes, is that he covers the surface of the original material without capturing the details that made them work the first time. For example, Michael Caine's protagonist in the original GET CARTER inspires curiosity because while he is presented as a mob muscleman, he has the appearance of a dandy and physically threatens no one until almost 40 minutes into the film, so there is initial suspense to whether he can really hold his own in the grimy situations into which he inserts himself. Whereas in the 2000 remake, Sylvester Stallone is obviously a physical threat, and his first appearance on screen involves him beating up somebody, so there's no suspense in waiting to see if he can indeed be a match for his enemies.

Thus in the original film, the Summersisle townsfolk are very friendly, albeit condescending, to Sergeant Howie, the better to fuel his self-righteousness, and to feed him a steady diet of red herrings to guide him to his destiny. And all the while, the casual talk of fertility rites, of radical sex ed in the classroom, and the hot blonde barmaid keep him on edge. The unease was not that they were a threat, but that they were...just weird people he wanted to escape but couldn't. In the remake, there is a chilly obvious nature to all the female inhabitants, and a painfully labored extended metaphor of making all the male inhabitants mute, which may be in keeping with LaBute's vaginal dentata, but results in taking all the suspense away. Howie's tormentors would seem like fun people to hang with...provided they didn't have you marked for sacrifice, but Malus' stream of harpies are exactly the kind of granola-munchers that one dreads crossing paths with at Whole Foods. It's scarier to be scared when you have nothing to be scared of, or as Henry Hill reminds us in GOODFELLAS, when they come to whack you, they come as your friends.

And from my usage of an old colloquialism in that paragraph, yes, as documented heavily by better writers, this movie is absurdly and almost unbearably [pun intended] misogynistic, a expanded demonstration of every exasperated man's lament that ultimately, a woman will choose the irrational myths of her mothers than the realities of her lover. LaBute's films are notorious for, to put it gently, depicting women who do not act in the best interests of anyone, including themselves. However, the bombastic and stubborn manner in which Nicolas Cage as Sergeant Malus conducts himself on the island would lead me to think that, just like the films that put LaBute on the map, this film is more plain misanthropic: women may be conniving bitches, but men can't stop being impetuous cowboys. In LaBute's classics like IN THE COMPANY OF MEN and YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, it is obvious that the men are not to be identified with, liked or copied, and when they make bad choices we can laugh at them. But Sgt. Malus, just like Sgt. Howie in the original, is our surrogate - we have to identify with him because he is the "normal" in the strange land, and while both men have hang-ups and prejudices that we may not like, they're on an ostensible noble cause we should want them to see to completion.

And that is the second huge problem: the filmmakers' flawed choice as to what motivates Malus. First, he is distraught over being unable to save a parent and child from a crash (an event staged by the two "victims", plus his female cop partner), thus the plan to sucker him to Summersisle to save another child and redeem himself, a plausible enough ruse. But if the plot then dictates that Willow, the planted fiancee, reveals that Rowan is his own daughter, this should have been his motivation instead. As a blustery cop jacking bicycles (!) and kick-punching women (!!!), he comes across as a bully, almost deserving of his fate; if he wasn't so caught up in machismo, he could have saved himself. As a whole, I am tired of the horror/thriller convention of a protagonist whose destruction is caused by their own hubris being taken advantage of by others, because if they're that much of a jerk, why feel badly for them? Besides, if he's a cop, hasn't he worked bunco or harassed a couple Roma before, can't he see the David Mamet plot unfolding?

But if the same story had played out with him as a desperate father, appealing to the parental sympathies of the islanders, then his betrayal at the end would have carried poignance and heartbreak. Then Summersisle is truly evil because the matriarchy has turned his parental instincts against him, just as Joanna Eberhart fucks up her successful escape in the hopes of "saving" her children and winds up being turned into another one of THE STEPFORD WIVES. In fact, Cage does undergo a similar sort of doublecross in MATCHSTICK MEN, when his con artist character learns that he has been taken by the girl he believed to be his daughter. In that film, it takes on a unique redemptive turn, because though he has been robbed clean, he acknowledges that he was ready to give up his life and his riches to save his "daughter," and therefore, he accepts the results. Thus, as Howie prayed fervently to his God during his last moments of life in the original, Malus should have spent less time moaning about "you bitches" and "the bees" and instead frantically cried out, "ROWAN, YOU'RE MY LITTLE GIRL, I LOVE YOU!" instead. One always feels more empathy for a fallen dad than a nosy cop.

Finally, to cement the suckitude, the "six months later" ending. (Which, in fairness, was a studio-mandated reshoot; the original ending can be found as a supplement on the DVD) Ho-ho, here we go again, another male getting lured into the scam. (Wouldn't spidery metaphors be more appropriate here than bees?) Not only is it unnecessary, but it's been done already in the terrible "it's a ripoff of THE WICKER MAN but they'll never sue us" '80's movie SPELLBINDER with Kelly Preston. I'm sure it's not intentional on LaBute's behalf, only unlucky cable surfers like me have ever seen that lump of wicca slander, but it's lazy. And I'm just mad that I have to be reminded of that loss of my earth time after this loss of my earth time.

Perhaps we've got it all wrong. Maybe, as Kim Morgan has suggested, the whole thing is really a comedy. After all, LaBute's films are often intentionally funny, albeit a very dark humor, the school of "cleaning blood of the clown suit" punchlines. In some cities, midnight screenings are filled with smart-alecks chanting "NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES!" the way children watching Looney Tunes would chant, "No, not 'The Post'! ANYTHING BUT 'THE POST'!" But no, I don't buy it. LaBute was trying to be scary, and the only thing that scared me was that this movie was going to be a bad turn in his career. Seeing as how he has been currently doing paycheck gigs like LAKEVIEW TERRACE and the current remake of DEATH AT A FUNERAL, in that respect, my prophecy has sadly come true.

So, Could This Movie Be Saved? Had LaBute thought a little harder about what motivates irrational behavior besides base hormonal rage, yes. But he didn't. And thus we are left with a font of failure that is honey for a parade of nasty stingers.