Well, as my friend Ben would say: yup, that movie exists.
Surprisingly, you can read this whole article without having seen the film and the ending won’t be spoiled (I don’t give it away, I promise). I’d seen the original five years ago, and so this time around there were no surprises to spoil, though if I’m honest I never really thought the surprise was all that great in the first place.
This is not to say that the end is easy to guess—I didn’t on my original viewing—as much as it’s saying that the end cheats in really frustrating ways, made all the more frustrating since without the end, there isn’t much to the story of Oldboy at all.
It’s difficult to figure out which audience to write this review toward. Those new to the story may well have been shocked by the rug pulled out from under them, and those who enjoy shocks regardless of setup definitely get their money’s worth. Maybe it’s best to comment first on how director Spike Lee’s stamp makes the American version different from the Korean one, before I talk about why, in both cases, that ending leaves me cold.
Since Lee’s so often given the reputation of a somber activist, it’s important to note that his oft-overlooked sense of humor is intact. Do the Right Thing has some of the funniest lines in film history (“I’m just a young black man tryin’ to keep his dick hard in a harsh and cruel world, man”) and his opening shot here is of a sign above a gun store that says “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Considering that Oldboy’s protagonist infamously uses a hammer as his weapon of choice, it’s a nice moment that rewards you for paying attention. There’s also a discipline in keeping the film multicultural; nearly every character (save for the central four, though I guess that caveat itself speaks volumes) is a minority, which is a refreshing change to see in a Hollywood film—and say what you want about Lee’s move from his solo 40 Acres and A Mule productions to mainstream fair like this and Inside Man, but at least he’s bringing cultural change to the masses.
Honestly, though, Lee’s trademarks are elsewhere few and far between. As Joe watches the twenty years he spends locked up in his motel room pass, using only the news for a sense of context and changing times, we see snippets of presidents being inaugurated (though Lee skips Bush’s inauguration, which might be a sly joke). And when the inevitable shot of the World Trade Center being attacked comes, it’s par for the course that Lee holds on it for longer than any of the others. And truly attentive viewers will spot Lee’s own brother Cinque playing the role of the bellboy on the poster in Joe’s motel room with the words “Welcome! Please enjoy your stay.”
Otherwise, though, Lee’s presence is minimal, which validates my original curiosity about why he was ever paired with this project in the first place. I’m assuming that an American remake was in the works for forever since it’s so popular with the fanboys, and maybe Lee just happened to be the nearest available talent on the Universal lot. And the actors, hard though they may try, are surprisingly forgettable (except Samuel L. Jackson, who’s incapable of such a thing)—even Emily Olsen who’s been on my radar for a few years feels flat and misplaced here. So without any major contribution from Lee himself, and no particular standout performances, we’re left with…well, Oldboy, really, and therein lies a problem (for me) because Oldboy’s story is preposterous.
The very first sign of Oldboy’s wonky setup is how quickly Joe is taken away. We barely see anything about his life, next to nothing has been established, before he gets kidnapped, so when he wakes up in a motel room and doesn’t know where he is, it isn’t an achievement of storytelling that we’re left in the dark. It’s a cheat. There’s no riddle to be solved because there are no clues, and there are no clues because there’s nothing yet to clue us into. It’s the same thing as if I say, “I’m thinking of a number between one and one million—can you guess it?” That doesn’t exactly make me a clever tease; I’m just leaving you in the dark.
None of that would matter if the story we watched while all of these (dubious) headgames were being played was interesting, but it isn’t. The entire point of Joe is that he’s one-dimensional. He’s one-dimensional in act one, when he’s painted as a superficial jerk; he’s quite literally one-dimensional in act two, when he’s locked up and stripped down to nothing more than a man in a room (Brolin’s performance doesn’t elevate that point, either—Min-sik Choi in the original was much wiser to underplay it); and he’s one-dimensional in act 3, when he’s single-mindedly hell-bent on finding whoever it is that did this to him.
He’s also not very smart, which is another way the story cheats. The villain Adrien in the end repeats what the villain Woo-jin Lee said in the original, which is, “You forgot to ask the most important question of all: why did I release you?” Which is true, although I’m not convinced that Joe forgot as much as the screenwriters knew that to have him wonder that for even a second would have derailed the whole thing. It’s like an art-house version of Roger Ebert’s Idiot Plot. You’re locked in a room for twenty years and are just about to escape when sleeping gas seeps through the ceiling to stop you. You wake up in a box in a field with a stack of cash next to you. And then you just shrug and go, “Oh, good, I’ll just keep doing what I was gonna do then.” No questions asked?
How about Joe’s friend Chucky, or Marie whom he befriends. He spends countless hours telling them what happened to him so that they can help him find the man who locked him up. At no point during that time did he mention Unresolved Mysteries of Crime, the show that twice broadcast the story of his disappearance and the only outlet through which he saw his daughter? (I mean come on).
Or how about Adrian’s plan itself? First of all, even if he did “create a girl who wanted someone just like you” out of Joe’s daughter, how on Earth could he know they’d meet? And even if he arranged for them to meet, how on Earth could he know they’d screw? And why would he give them a 46 hour time limit in which to do so? Why not let the relationship gestate if that’s what you’re really after? What are the odds that Joe’s gonna stop in the middle of his less than two day challenge to fuck someone?
Secondly, this is the most elaborate plan any villain has ever executed in the history of revenge plots. It’s the kind of thing my beginning creative writing students would come up with before they’ve learned anything about craft. It’s for instance monstrously convenient that Adrien has a limitless pile of money—it allows the screenwriters to move around without the usual restrictions and leads to at least half a dozen yeah-right moments. And what if Joe killed him before his speech is given at the end? How does Adrien know when Joe is going to go postal and when he’s going to restrain himself? What if Joe and Marie went to some random hotel to have sex, instead of the cabin where the camera is conveniently placed? Sounds like pedantry but in fact it’s very relevant to how Blofeld-ish the final set-piece ends up being, considering that the script’s so praised for its grand surprise.
And finally, again: it’s a total cheat. On about day one of any good literature class you learn that the most satisfying surprises are the ones where you can experience a story once and never see the end coming, then read it again and wonder how you never guessed it along the way. There are hints. There are signs. But of course we have zero clue who Adrian is the entire film (he’s just a voice for a while, and then just a face) so it’s not much of an achievement that the film keeps us from guessing the ending.
Again, it’s like someone telling you to choose a number between one and a million, except when you’ve already seen the ending you know which number the person is thinking of, which is kinda pointless. Which is probably why, seeing it a second time (and knowing what was going to happen), I couldn’t help but think of anything except, well, this exists.