The TV Addict 

By Souf Jalili

Back in 2006, director Justin Lin gave Chan-wook Park fans many sleepless nights by expressing interest in remaking Park’s masterpiece OLD BOY with Nicholas Cage possibly in the lead role. The project had disaster written all over it. Here was a flawless piece of pop-culture artistry and a beloved fanboy classic that couldn’t possibly be redone, ready to be butchered by a director best known for making FAST AND THE FURIOUS movies. Luckily, following months of speculation, Lin came to his senses, realized his folly and backed out. The project slipped into development hell, much to the relief of Park fans.

That relief may end, as fears of a Hollywood-style butchering of the classic resurfaced last week when news broke that Steven Spielberg and Will Smith were circling the project. Inferior remakes of successful foreign films are inevitable today. The dearth of original ideas in Hollywood is common knowledge and despite complaints from world cinema fans, studios have continued unabashedly in their quest to pick on every successful foreign film and mould it into their own image. However, if there ever was a foreign movie that Hollywood should keep its claws off, it would have to be OLDBOY.

Part visually inventive neo-noir thriller, part operatic tragedy, the Korean original and 2004 Grand Prize Winner at Cannes, was a meticulously crafted hyper-violent revenge drama that centered on a recently paroled middle-aged man who following an unexplained 15 year incarceration sets out to avenge those responsible for his abduction and his wife’s murder. With an amazing script, dazzling cinematography and a great cast, the film is a remarkable achievement and is every bit deserving of all the veneration it receives from lovers of Asian cinema. While it is graphically violent and narratively twisted with some very disturbing scenes and plot developments, there are no gimmicks and there is no gratuitous violence. The film takes many risks and explores some very novel thematic elements and in the end manages to pull all of them off successfully.

Coming back to the proposed remake, Spielberg is one of the most influential film personalities in the history of Hollywood; while Smith is among its most bankable stars. Together they can be a force to be reckoned with and their combined star power and political clout means that the project may actually materialize this time. However, not only does Will Smith have some very large shoes to fill as the lead, but he and Spielberg also face a conundrum in translating the film for American audiences. The original film ventured into morally extreme territory and explored some very taboo themes which are most likely to be rejected by American audiences and consequently a backing studio is likely to find it difficult to recoup its investment. The only way to avoid such a financial fiasco would be to water down the content and to dispense of said taboo themes, but this would mean altering the storyline substantially and naturally pissing off fans of the original.

Chan-wook Park fans and OLDBOY aficionados aside, Spielberg and Smith also have their own fan base to think of. What made OLDBOY click was its unique mix of story and extreme violence and frankly I don’t see any of that coming from Spielberg and Smith as they are essentially two of the safest and most family-friendly entertainers in Hollywood today. Barring the odd violence and foul language in the BAD BOY movies, Smith has maintained a squeaky clean, family-friendly image and by essaying the lead in a movie like OLDBOY he risks tarnishing this image and isolating his fan base. Also, while there’s no doubting Smith’s acting capabilities, there is a certain big-budget Hollywood star persona and hyper-likeability associated with him which makes it hard to imagine him disappearing into the role.

Likewise, while Spielberg has occasionally explored intense and gritty themes, notably in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and MUNIC, he is known mostly for his family-friendly films and he too risks alienating his fan base by helming a film as controversial as the OLDBOY remake. Did I mention that among other things the original involved a controversial live-octopus lunch scene, a bloody hammer-fight and a tooth-pulling scene? Somehow, I can’t see Spielberg orchestrating such scenes and Smith pulling them off and more importantly, I really can’t see their fans and American audiences accepting the on- screen results. Again the only way, the duo can keep their fans happy is by going the PG-13 route and drastically toning down and reworking the content of the original.

There is nothing stopping Hollywood from cashing on the success of a foreign film by making a lousy adaption of it to cater to English-speakers who just can’t bring themselves to read subtitles, especially post the critical and commercial success of’ THE DEPARTED (a remake of the Asian film INFERNAL AFFAIRS). However, OLDBOY belongs to that rare breed of movies that are perfect and done right just the way they are. Movies like these you just don’t remake, and any attempt to do so, no matter how ambitious, only serves to diminish them and scar their memory and legacy. Spielberg and Smith are better off waiting for an original script to collaborate on or alternatively there is no dearth of J-horror films that they can attempt to remake, .how about ONE MISSED CALL 2 or THE GRUDGE 3.

What I would really like to see them do is to use their star power to convince Chan-wook Park to do an original English language film for them…now that would really be something else……