Oldboy (2013)

I wasn't quite sure what to make of Spike Lee's remake of Oldboy at first.  I've seen the South Korean original by Chan-wook Park many times and it's a favorite of mine.  Was I going to be able to watch this remake objectively?  I'm not the biggest fan of remakes either, but if there's one instance where it's not always a bad thing is when doing an American version of a foreign film.  You can address issues with the story that may be cultural or lost in translation.  Really the biggest problem with a remake of Oldboy is that it features some significant twists and disturbing story elements, so all the shock and surprise is gone for anyone that's seen the original.  I tried looking at the remake from the perspective of someone that's never seen it before, and I think that's where Oldboy does work on some level.

After a night of massive drinking, Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin) finds himself locked in what appears to be a hotel room.  He's unable to escape and there's no explanation as to why he's there.  After 20 years goes by, he's finally released still not knowing why.  Joe's out for vengeance and discovering why this was done to him.  He's befriended by a nurse, Marie (Elizabeth Olsen), who agrees to help him after learning his story.  Eventually a mysterious man (Sharlto Copley) reveals himself as his captor and issues Joe a challenge to discover his real identity and why he imprisoned and tortured him.  There's much more to the story than that, but I wanna try and keep this spoiler free for you folks out there that aren't familiar with it.

There are several changes between the two versions.  As you'd might suspect, many of these changes don't add much to the story, and some serve to hand hold the audience through the film a bit more. There's a little more lead up in this version where we see more of Joe's work and personal behavior prior to his imprisonment.  It's absolutely clear what kind of person he was.  I didn't think this change was really necessary (the scene of Joe's bender goes on way too long), but it did allow them to show more growth from Joe while imprisoned.  There's a change to the villain's back story which I felt made his motivation less sympathetic and much creepier.  A minor change that felt like it may have been cultural was that the length of Joe's imprisonment was increased from 15 to 20 years.  Again, without trying to spoil anything, this ages a certain character to make their profession and relationship to Joe a little more believable.  One change I did like was at the end.  The original version has an ambiguous, artsy ending, where this version has more of a full circle feel.  I liked the finality of it.

One of the more obvious differences that was likely done to appeal to US audiences is that it's extremely bloody and violent, even more so than the original.  The violence is even a little Tarantino-esque.  The infamous "hammer scene" was changed up to make it more action oriented.  In the original, it's more about the character becoming a force of nature, where in Spike Lee's version it felt more like an obligatory action scene because nobody had been killed in a while.  It's over-choreographed (in some cases badly) and changed to have multiple floors, making it feel more like a video game.

Overall, it's paced well though, and I never found myself bored with it despite knowing exactly how it was going to turn out.  While it doesn't have the same aesthetic as the original, Spike Lee put his own style on it and I thought there were some creative looking scenes.

Oldboy does feature some strong performances.  Josh Brolin is very good at portraying the mental transformation of Joe, and even goes through a physical transformation as he molded himself into a force of vengeance.  Elizabeth Olsen is also good as Marie and I though her performance and changes to her character was one of the distinct improvements over the original.  Again, some of these changes seemed to be cultural, which is likely why I feel that way.  Unfortunately, one performance that definitely was not an improvement was Sharlto Copley's choices as The Stranger.  He's way over-the-top in that bad, mustache-twirling, Bond villain way.  It seems he may have spent a little too much time at the Evil Villain Academy.  It's almost comical how over-the-top it is, but since this wasn't made to be a campy film, it really undermines the seriousness of it.  You can contrast that with Samuel L. Jackson's small role as Chaney, which was also a little over-the-top (is there a Jackson performance that isn't?), but had an element of fun to it.

If you haven't yet seen the original, or you're someone that doesn't have the patience for subtitles, then I think you'll enjoy Oldboy for the dark, twisted and violent thriller it is.  Fans of the original, however, will likely find that it doesn't add anything new to the story.  Much of the nuance and subtlety is gone, and Spike Lee's version is more of a telegraphed punch.  Even for existing fans, I think it's worth a rent just to compare the two, but it's nothing that anyone needs to rush out and see in the theater.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars

Broken City (2013) - Movie Review

It might be a broken city, but it somehow feels like a lot of other cities.

Mark Wahlberg plays a Billy Taggart, a former cop (shocker, I know) turned private investigator in Broken City.  The prologue shows us that he beat a murder rap, but due to the circumstances of killing Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe) and Chief of Police Faribanks (Jeffrey Wright) tell him he's still off the force.  Hostetler thinks Taggart is a hero though, as the person he murdered was a suspected rapist and murderer that got off on a technicality.

Seven years later, Taggart is barely getting by as a P.I.  He's too nice and letting people get away with not paying him in a timely manner, or just not paying him at all. Mayor Hostetler comes to the rescue when he offers Taggart $50,000 investigate his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), whom he suspects is having an affair.  Hostetler is in the political fight of his life as the election looms around the corner, and if the affair is true it could be really damaging to his campaign.  Taggart investigates, things are discovered, and we learn there's a lot more going on than just a simple affair.

I think that all of that 'going on' is the problem with Broken City that prevents it from being a much better film.  The plot gets needlessly complex and twisty for it's own good.  There are lots of threads that drag the story down or don't have any kind of payoff.  It wants to be smarter than it is, but when you find out what's really going on, it's kind of let down.  This was writer Brian Tucker's first film, and it's not a bad effort. The story doesn't insult the intelligence or anything like that, but it only manages to be a very paint-by-the-numbers thriller. The other problem with the script is that there no snap to it at all.  It's not that it needed more humor, but considering all of the threats and politics involved, you'd think there'd be more bite.

I've often criticized Mark Wahlberg for not having a lot of range, and this is another role that doesn't challenge him at all, but I actually thought he was well cast here.  The role needed that tough, no nonsense guy, and that's pretty much exactly what he is.  One the unnecessary subplots involved Taggart's girlfriend (Natalie Martinez), and while it explains the murder at the beginning of the film, it only amounted to giving Taggart an excuse to go off the rails for a minute.  You see him hit rock bottom, but then he immediately bounces back, as if it was just something he needed to get out of his system.  This whole part could have been removed, and it would have tightened the movie up quite a bit.

I did enjoy Wahlberg's chemistry and relationship with his assistant (Alona Tal) though.  They have a few nice scenes where he's showing her the ropes, and I would have liked to see a little more of that in the film.  It doesn't hurt that Alona Tal is a looker either.

The strength of the film is the cast.  Russell Crowe does a good job here, and I this the first film in a while that I really enjoyed him in or I didn't think he was completely phoning it in.  The problem with the character is that he plays out very predictably, but that's not Crowe's fault.  Catherine Zeta-Jones is the adulterous wife, but there wasn't enough to her character to justify getting such a well known actor to play the role.  Jeffrey Wright is also good as the Police Chief that you don't like at first, but come around to.  Barry Pepper returns to the big screen as Jack Valliant, the man running against Hostetler, and Kyle Chandler also has a small role as his campaign manager.

Allen Hughes (of "The Hughes Brothers" that directed The Book of Eli) does a descent job with the direction.  It's capable work, but there aren't any surprises, and there's nothing distinctive about the visuals or style.

Broken City isn't a broken movie (I don't quite understand the hate on rottentomatoes for it), nor a bad one, but it's also not a particularly good one either.  It's well acted and moves along enough to be fairly entertaining, but doesn't have enough originality to stand out or be all that memorable.  This is the kind of film you'll enjoy enough when you're bored and need to kill some time.  Rent it on a rainy day.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars

Sinister (2012) - Movie Review

Has anything good ever come from watching old home movies?

I don't know if you've watched the trailers for Sinister, but I advise against it.  The less you know about it, the more effective it will be.  I'll try to keep this short.

Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is a true-crime novelist that has moved his family to a old house to investigate another unsolved crime for his next book.  His writing hasn't made him very popular with certain law enforcement types, which is something the local sheriff (former U.S. Senator Fred Dalton Thompson) makes very clear as he's moving in.  It's not so much a welcome to the neighborhood as it is a "Hey, I don't like you and I'd wish you'd leave."

As he's unpacking Ellison finds a mysterious box in the attic filled with old Super 8 reels.  I know what you're thinking, "Great, another found footage film."  The twist is that this is a film about the guy that actually finds the footage.  He watches the films and they all depict grisly murders of several families, and one happens to be the very family murder he came to write about.

The more he watches these videos, the more weird things happen in the house.  He starts seeing things and hearing sounds in the attic.  Is Ellison's mind playing tricks on him?  It's not just him though, as it appears to be having an effect on his kids (Clare Foley and Michael Hall D'Addario) as well.  You wonder why he doesn't just get his family out of there, and that's one of the flaws of Sinister.  It has a lot of the same conventions and bad decision making that plagues other films in the genre.  It bugged me a little less here than in other films though.  However, there are many times where he's investigating a sound late at night, and I'm wondering why doesn't he just turn the frigging lights on.

Ellison enlists the aid of a local deputy (James Ransone) and a college professor (Vincent D'Onofrio) to find out more about symbols involved in these murders and how they are all related.  When they first introduce the deputy, actually referred to as "Deputy So and So", he starts as a bumbling fan-boy of Ellison's, but develops into a bigger part of Ellison's investigation as the movie goes on and doesn't feel like a throwaway character.

The middle third of the film is where movie really shines as far scares.  Normally, I am not fan of jump scares in horror films, as I think they're cheap.  Lesser horror films don't do a good job of building tension or setting up its story, so it has to rely on bang moments to scare you. Sinister does a good job of creating a creepy atmosphere and a sense of mystery, which makes those scares more effective.  Even when I knew a scare was coming, I still jumped a little in my seat and laughed that the movie was able to get me.  There are lots of lingering images that gave me the chills, and sometimes the scariest stuff is when your imagination gets the better of you.

However, whether it was that the movie lost steam or you get desensitized to all the scares after a bit, I found myself less scared as we built towards the conclusion. The pacing could have been tightened up a little bit, which would have helped.  I liked how it ended, but was still kind of disappointed that it didn't quite have the impact it should have.

Another strength of Sinister is that the performances are strong and the dialog and characters are well-written.  Ethan Hawke does a good job as Ellison, and you understand his motivation, even once it's clear his family is at risk.  He thinks this book will be a big hit that will allow his family to live comfortably, but his wife (Juliet Rylance) just wishes he'd drop all this so they could live normal lives.  It's a character that normally you wouldn't like, but you still manage to root for him.

It also has some unexpected moments of humor that were a welcome break in the tension.  I gotta give it to writer C. Robert Cargill.  Some of you may know Cargill as "Carlyle" from Spill.com.  I was really interested to see what kind of movie a film critic would create.  Would he stay away from convention, and the types of things he would normally be critical of?  While there are some typical horror elements here and the third act was a little weak, overall I still think it's a strong effort and definitely better than most horror films I've seen recently.

Director Scott Derrickson (who also wrote the screenplay) hasn't had the best track record so far with movies, the recent The Day the Earth Stood Still remake and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but this is a much better effort this time around.  He keeps the tension up for most of the film, and even the soundtrack adds to the ominous and eerie tone.

Sinister is the first genuinely scary movie I've seen in while, and this is coming from someone that watches a lot of horror movies.  It's has it's flaws, but if you're someone that likes getting the shit scared out of you, there's definitely some fun to be had here.  It's worth a matinee if you like horror.

3.5 (out of 5) Death Stars