Oldboy (2003)
Cert: 18 / 119 mins / Dir. Chan-wook Park / Trailer
Okay, that was weirder than expected. Chan-wook Park's revenge thriller takes a long, lingering look down the path most genre-movies would walk then dismisses it with barely another thought, but somehow keeping the unravelling mystery and occasional bursts of gleeful violence intact.
The weirdness is a major factor of course, and it occurred to me that it could be the result of a cultural disparity between Korean and more 'Western' cinema. But on balance, I've arrived at the conclusion that it's just meant to be weird. Which isn't really to say that the film is relentlessly grim and unnerving; moments of pitch-black humour intersperse protagonist Dae-su's search for not only his captor, but for the reason behind his 15-year incarceration, and it's a well-told, offbeat story.
It's not all plain sailing, however, and the various visual/narrative techniques used throughout the film (to great effect individually) don't always gel together as well as you'd like. Much of the framing's absolutely gorgeous, but then it's used for fight-scenes which feel plastic and non-threatening (I didn't come for the violence, but I expected it).
I don't think the film has changed my life or perspective on movies, but it interested the fuck out of me, and I'm actually intrigued to see the 2013 Spike Lee remake, now. Well played, Mr Park.
Oh, and I didn't eat seafood before watching Oldboy, but after watching Min-sik Choi munch a live octopus, you'll be lucky to find me near an aquarium without a sickbag…
Nope. As is becoming the standard, Oldboy had been recommended to me several times, but only by people who failed to convince me I needed to see it. Incidentally, some sources put this film as 2003, some as 2004 and some as 2005. But I hadn't seen it before tonight, and 2003 fits my viewing schedule, so bite me.
I am.
I pretty much would, yes.
But not to everyone, and not all of the time.
There isn't.
Oh, you thought a Korean-language thriller would be a nightmare to link quickly didn't you? Well, Oldboy director Chan-wook also headed up 2013's gothic-noir, Stoker, a film which starred The Phantom Menace's very own Naboo pilot, Ralph Brown.
YEAH, LOOK IMPRESSED!.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
High-concept, action sci-fi isn't a genre you'd normally associate with the pen of Luc 'Taken' Besson, and after the Freeman/Johansson vehicle Lucy, that isn't about to change. His tale of a young woman who develops accelerated intelligence and telekinetic powers after an experimental narcotic leaks into her bloodstream, suggests that Besson wanted to make a superhero film, but thinks that comic books are somehow beneath him.
My main problem with the film is that I just couldn't buy into any of it. At all. I know that the super-powers exhibited in the Avengers series are absolutely fictional, for example, but they're set in a world which is real, and are governed by real-world physics. Lucy on the other hand, is based sincerely around the misconception that we only use 10% of our brains. It's not a wild and dangerous speculation to point out that this is bollocks, in the same way as Mars won't really appear to be the same size as the moon this year. Nonetheless, Besson takes a provenly incorrect starting point, and builds a story around it which defies all common sense, suggesting that humans all possess the brainpower not only to move physical objects with out minds, but also to overwrite the basic structure of science. And it all happens from the accidental ingestion of a drug which is designed in the film to be ingested, without a single person in the organisation which created it having examined the effects of its use. At all.
The real scientific experiment here may be 'what happens when I don't employ a proof-reader for my script?'.
In and of itself, it's perhaps not as bad a starting block for a movie as I'm making out, but the film fails to convince at every turn. Resident brain-expert Morgan Freeman basically spends an hour and a half shrugging and asking "how does that work?", while Scarlett Johansson's powers increase exponentially and she replies "look, it just does, alright? Science, and that". I wouldn't go so far as to say the film is stupid, just wilfully ignorant. For example, if Lucy can change the colour, length and style of her hair to avoid airport security, why can't she change the structure of her facial features? If Lucy can make a room full of police officers pass out at will, why does she spend the next half hour avoiding the Korean crime syndicate who are attempting to hunt her down? Why is a woman who can bend matter, still constricted by gravity and inertia?
By the time that Freeman asserts that our universe "isn't governed by mathematical laws", the whole thing has devolved into a nonsensical chase caper, with less cause-and-effect than the average Tom & Jerry cartoon. Lucy isn't a movie where you can leave your brain in the car park (you want Besson's 3 Days To Kill for that), simply because it keeps hurling fabricated suppositions at its audience for them to think about. There's just nothing I could believe in, even within the context of the film. And if you can't explain your premise using logic and reason, you may as well have your heroine gain her powers after being exposed to a solar-storm, or somesuch.
On a more technical level, Lucy is a curious mix of high-end CGI effects work, and regularly intercut cheap-looking library footage of safari animals, volcanos, cityscapes etc, which suggests that the budget had been well and truly spanked long before the film's final edit. Scarlett Johansson's performance is surprisingly agile, although hers is the only one, giving the impression that this could have been a much stronger film had it been in different hands from the start.
What's more worrying is that distributors Universal also seem to lack confidence in their product's appeal. The trailers beforehand (The Riot Club, Medea, Let's Be Cops, Sin City 2, Before I Go To Sleep, Sex Tape - in that order) suggest that the studio has no idea who will be watching this film, and so aren't sure what to pitch at them for future attractions. Although I'm sure if any of those feature Morgan Freeman as a beleaguered academic, it'll be right up the audience's street.
For a film about increased intelligence, Luc Besson takes a perverse delight in insulting the intellect of his audience, and it's perhaps ironic that I felt slightly more stupid for having sat through it.
Science-fiction for people who hate science, Lucy takes the incredible and makes it truly unbelievable…
Oh, it pretty much is, yeah.
Not nearly enough.
No. It doesn't.
Whatever.
A little bit, yeah.
I shouldn't think so.
Didn't hear one.
Has Johansson got an unfeasibly large overdraft she's trying to pay off, or something?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
