Reviews for this film from our members:
- [New – 4/3/14] | Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- José Arce @ LaButaca.net [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Spike Lee adapta el clásico contemporáneo de Park-Chan wook planteándolo como un ejercicio de estilo atravesado por secuencias de violencia explícita. Una película innecesaria, que demuestra de nuevo el poco amor de la audiencia USA por el cine subtitulado.
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: If the new resolution for Joe is ingenious, if the filmmaking is big and baroque and blood-splattered, if the film is a reminder that Lee is among our premier cinematic stylists, his Oldboy is still unwieldy at best and a mess at worst. Its most accurate descriptor would be “interesting,” and while I’m certainly not one for discouraging the output of interesting movies, if you’re going to remake a great film like Oldboy, you’ve got to do a helluva lot better than that.
- Patrick Bromley @ F This Movie!
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: Goofy and corny at times, Spike Lee’s “Oldboy” seems to be destined for many enjoyable drunken viewings on bad movie night in the future. It just has to age a bit before it gets there.
- Phil Concannon @ Phil on Film
- Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Excerpt: While few American filmmakers could hope to match the fervor of Chan-Wook’s cinematic vision, Spike Lee is one of the few who can do Oldboy the justice it deserves.
- Ben Kendrick @ Screen Rant
- Excerpt: A competent but not particularly memorable remake of the superior foreign original.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: It might not match the ambiguity and emotional power of Park Chan-wook’s version, but it has an indelibly sick bite. A word of warning, though: “Oldboy” is not for the faint of heart and not really palatable for casual moviegoers.
- Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Brent McKnight @ Paste Magazine
- Excerpt: Spike Lee’s “Oldboy” is a flawed remake, but he never shies away from the violence and twisted themes that set the movie apart.
- Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: The visual inventiveness and moral complexity of the original is swapped for a frequently brutish, often tasteless and ultimately dull revenge film that seems to enjoy the squalor of its violence rather than examine its futility, all of which leads to an ending that lacks catharsis and simply leaves you wondering why.
- R. Kurt Osenlund @ SouthPhillyReview.com
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: Still, Lee does a superb job here: appropriately grittier and grimier than Chan-wook’s perfectly-framed, pretty-as-a-picture original, this is an unusually brutal and violent film that really makes a visceral impact.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: The only usefulness of Lee’s travesty is to alert would-be audiences that they should see, or revisit, Chan-wook Park’s incredible film.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A respectable piece of filmmaking from a purely technical perspective [but an] unnecessary, inferior remake…Lee’s ‘Oldboy’ is harder to swallow than the octopus in Park’s original.
