Spike Lee’s remake of Park Chan-wook’s brutal, bloody Oldboy is fast approaching, which means we get reminded of that fact a lot. We’vehad plenty of featurettes and imagery, and here comes a big new poster, featuring one of the more iconic images from both films.
Oldboy follows Josh Brolin’s Joe Doucett, a boozy, piggish, deadbeat dad and screw-up advertising executive. When we meet him in 1993, he’s messing up potential business contacts, forgetting his child’s birthday and shouting down the phone at his ex-wife. Then he meets a mysterious woman, is drugged and wakes up in a weird hotel room. One that has no visible means of escape and little in the way of entertainment save for a wonky television.
Through it, he learns that his ex-wife has been horribly beaten and murdered and his daughter is now living with foster parents. Oh, and he’s the prime suspect. Joe, understandably, is shattered by the news, but can’t leave his room.
And there he stays for 20 years, trapped like a rat and fed the same meals every day. Slowly but surely he sorts himself out, conquering his alcoholism, getting in shape and trying to figure out who did this to him and how he can track down his daughter. Just as unexpectedly as he arrived, he’s released, with a mysterious person sending him on a quest to find the answers he’s probably better off not knowing...
As for the hammer? For anyone who hasn’t seen the original, it comes into play in a couple of key scenes, and let’s just say the moments (and the tool) make an impact. With Elizabeth Olsen, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Ware, Max Casella and Sharlto Copley in the cast, Oldboy is out on December 6.