'Oldboy': The performances are over-the-top but underfelt
The Korean director Park Chan-wook鈥檚 鈥�Oldboy鈥� is one of those movies that is routinely referred to as 鈥渘ot for the squeamish.鈥� Neither is Spike Lee鈥檚 remake, starring Josh Brolin as Joe Doucett, a philandering screw-up who suddenly finds himself imprisoned in a hotel room and remains a prisoner for 20 years. His release is just as mysterious. Why was he set free and who put him inside in the first place?
Lee is very good at creating a sense of free-floating dread, but he, and his screenwriter Mark Protosevich, don鈥檛 have a real flair for pulp (or, as with David Lynch, the hallucinatory horrors of pulp). 鈥淥ldboy鈥� is a ghastly, sodden experience, and the performances, as is often true in Lee鈥檚 films, are overscaled and underfelt. Elizabeth Olsen, trying hard to portray a reasonably real person, plays a helpmate-turned-lovemate for Joe, and Samuel L. Jackson, as the ostensible imprisoner, chalks up another Mr. Nasty for his portfolio. Grade: C+ (Rated R for strong brutal violence, disturbing images, some graphic sexuality and nudity, and language.)
