The first – the American remake of the Korean thriller Oldboy
came out in America. I’ve had my concerns on this one for a long time. I simply
didn’t think it was a good idea; I thought it was pointless and that they would
mess it up. Oldboy isn’t the type of movie that you remake. To my vindication,
the general consensus has been fairly negative, questioning even further why
the hell the remake was necessary.
The second – it was announced that there were plans for an American
remake of another Korean thriller, I Saw The Devil. This one has a similar tone
to Oldboy (both are grim and depressing, with lashings of brutal violence). And
already, instantly, I’m worried. Much like Oldboy, this isn’t a movie you
remake.
The biggest issue I have against remaking these movies is
one of relevance. These movies may have interesting plots, but they’re just a
skeleton for the filmmaking. These movies are revered for the directing, the
acting, the cinematography, the music, the editing, the sound effects – all the
individual parts of filmmaking that come together and make a great movie. And
you can’t remake that. Instead, remakes like to just rob imagery. The Oldboy
remake apparently re-does the hammer fight in the hallway scene, but ups the
ante and gore. That’s the big thing these remakes try to do – instead of aiming
for a unique spin or even just general quality, they try to ‘out-do’ anything
the original did. I’ve heard the Oldboy remake takes the ending revelation and
makes it bigger, dumber and ‘more shocking’. Doesn’t make it a better movie,
just a dumber one.
~
I Saw The Devil
After his fiancé is gruesomely murdered by a serial killer
(Choi Min-sik), a secret service agent (Lee Byung-hun) takes leave from work and tracks the
killer down. Once he catches him, instead of killing or arresting him, he beats
him severely and tags him with a tracking device then lets him go, only to
systematically hunt him down again and again. It's not long before the killer figures things out, and the tables are quickly turned.
It’s quite grim, gruesome and harrowing. This isn’t ‘happy
ending’ material, and the movie works more as a character study of the two
central characters – Choi is both chilling and juvenile in his brutality,
whereas Lee’s cold, detached desire for revenge threatens to consume him. So
why the hell remake it?
Like Oldboy, this is a brutal movie that is raised by strong
acting, visual flair and stylistic choices. And these aren’t the sort of things
you can really copy for a remake, though I’m sure they’ll try. Which takes me
to the major point in all this – what the hell is the point of remaking these
movies? The main plot is nothing too original, it’s more of a skeleton for the
cinematography and acting, and those are two things you can’t really remake.
But you can bet your ass they’re going to try. Foreign movies
that get Americanised remakes suffer the worst type of remake. Successful,
relevant remakes (usually of old movies) tend to change things up or take a
central premise and make something different of it (thereby ‘remaking’ it).
This is how we get fantastic remakes like Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’ or Carpenter’s
‘The Thing’. But foreign non-english movies don’t get that. Instead their
remakes are just rehashes, beat-for-beat, almost shot-for-shot, following the
original’s template, barring a few American changes. And they always end up
flat, soulless and bad.
I think I understand why they want to remake these movies,
but I don’t like the reason. It’s because some people don’t want to read
subtitles. Some people don’t want to watch movies that aren’t in English or don’t
star people the same race/colour they are. These are the same people who don’t
like black and white movies because they’re in black and white, and seemingly
disregard anything that was made pre-2000. These are the people who are killing
cinema, asking for the same old familiar swill year after year because they don’t
like something different or challenging, they don’t want to have to think or be
confronted. And these are the people who are being catered to.
I don’t see the need to remake these movies, particularly
when the real strength of these films are the film making side of them. They’re
enjoyed for the whole package, not just the main plot, but acting,
cinematography, music, editing – all the pieces of filmmaking put together. And
you can’t remake all that.
Related Rambling
The big thing with both Oldboy and I Saw The Devil is that
they’re both movies made by prolific Korean directors. These aren’t one-off
films, these are works made by successful directors who have a knack for visual
flair and cinematography. Both movies also have the same central star. Choi
Min-Sik plays the protagonist in Oldboy and the antagonist in I Saw The Devil.
Park Chan-wook did Oldboy as the middle film in his ‘revenge’
trilogy (Along with ‘Sympathy for Mr Vengeance’ which is great but depressing
and ‘Sympathy for Lady Vengeance’ which is pretty great too). Park also
directed the intriguing (but too long) vampire movie ‘Thirst’ and the bizarre romantic-comedy-drama
‘I’m a Cyborg, but that’s OK’.
I Saw The Devil was done by a personal favourite of mine,
Kim Ji-woon. He’s directed a whole heap of movies I really love, and his output
covers heaps of genres (‘A Bittersweet Life’ is a gangster film, ‘A Tale of Two
Sisters’ is horror, ‘The Quiet Family’ is black humour, ‘The Good, The Bad, The
Weird’ is a mad-cap western).
Both directors also made their American debuts this year,
and both films unfortunately suffered due to their scripts. Park Chan-wook
directed ‘Stoker’, which is stylistically and visually brilliant, with some
great acting, but the script is seriously hokey midday-movie stuff and totally
destroys the film by the end with a dumbass twist (which isn’t much of a
surprise, it was written by the main guy from Prison Break). Kim Ji-woon
directed the Arnie vehicle ‘The Last Stand’, which was serviceable, but had an
average ensemble-cast script that feels as though it had been edited to include
Arnie.
This has happened to Kim Jee-woon before. 'A Tale of Two Sisters' was remade in America as ‘The Uninvited’.
In the original, following the death of their ill mother, two sisters return
home after spending time in a mental hospital. While at home they deal with
their new cruel stepmother and bizarre, possibly supernatural occurrences
around the family home. It’s a creepy, slow-burn atmospheric type of horror
that ramps up as it continues.
The American remake takes the first two sentence and then
goes completely stupid with it. Barring the central premise, these movies have
nothing in common. Even the various twists and revelations are completely
changed, here to be more action-packed and stupid to the cruel subtlety of the original.
Instead of a sense of foreboding and brooding atmosphere, we’ve got Elizabeth
Banks flailing around, doing an ‘evil stepmother’ thing. This is a dumb
American remake. How dumb? It starts with a freaking explosion. 
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