unnecessary remake, skip it, especially if you seen the original

I will start my review by saying that I never saw the original South Korean Oldboy film. My intention was seeing the original before seeing this american remake or even thinking if I wanted to see the remake or not because all of the negative comments about this new one. The thing is, I won tickets for the premiere and as a huge addict in films I couldn't refuse it. Many people told me not to see this despite not having seen the original but man, it's stronger than me!

The story of this film JEEZ! What an amazing story! But I have to admit that one of the things that I am certain (and from hearing the reactions of some people after the film finished) is that for more amazing that this story can be, unfortunately this film make it a little predictable. At the middle of the film I was already suspecting how it would end and in the original film (as you all say) the perfect pacing and the perfect atmosphere will keep you completely blank about what will happen until the very last minute.

Josh Brolin wasn't entirely bad for the role, he was intense and emotional but in my point of view he hadn't all of the intensity required for that role and he hadn't all of the emotion required for made me feel totally heartbroken for that poor father that learned a life lesson in the worst possible way.
Elizabeth Olsen wasn't bad, she is a promissing actress and Shalrto Copley is a good villian! He surprised me as a villian earlier this year on Elysium and he surprised me again. I think he has all of the creepiness required of this kind of characters.

Overall, I can't say that it was a horrible film because for me, mostly because of the shocking story, it was a surprise and I enjoyed. Although, some things didn't worked well for me.
After all I think it was better for me not watch the original film before because I had nothing to compare. Now I am still very curious to see the original Oldboy and take my conclusions.
Many of you might criticize my rate about it but I can't lie. It entertained me and I was totally stunned by the story.

7/10 - not too bad, in fact quite entertaining.

Chan-Wook Park > Spike Lee

Never seen the original , this movie was awesome. Period.

This movie was really something. This type of revenge should teach a lot of bullies in schools a valuable lesson. I have to say, I really enjoyed this one, I didn't expect that ending at all.

Wow, they truly did fuck this up. This is not only worse than the original in every conceivable way, but it's just plain bad. All the subtlety, uniqueness, and creativity on display in the original is nowhere to be found here. The action is considerably worse, the dialogue is awful, and the villain is horrendously laughable and dumbed down. Even the acting in this version sucks. Josh Brolin plays a character who is much different from Oh Dae-Su in the original, and neither his performance nor his character inspire all that much sympathy for what we see him going through.

If you haven't seen the original, then I could see you having an okay time with this, simply due to the 'what the fuck' nature of certain reveals and twists. But as a film, it's not good, and as a remake, it's an atrocious bastardisation of Park Chan-wook's masterpiece from 2003. Do yourself a favour and watch the original. Don't sully your soul with this trash.

simply put, "the fakest" movie i've ever seen.

What a poor excuse of a movie

Josh Brolin saves this action remake from being a total waste, but the only ones who will enjoy this version are those who never saw the Korean original, which towers over this pale copy in every way.

The original one was better, but this one is enjoyable too
It's not THAT bad for being a remake...

A good movie, Elizabeth Olsen made it even better :)

Not even close to be as good as the original one. And even if it was an original production, I'm affraid I would have to say that this isn't a great movie at all.

Dodd

سيء ع الآخر ؛ وين هو ووين النسخة الأصلية من الفلم(النسخة الكورية) لا التمثيل حلو ولا النهاية ولا المجريات ؛ وكتير مجريات مهمة صارت بالنسخة الأصلية ومشطوبة من النسخة الأمركانية ؛ نصحية اوعك تشاهده ؛ شاهد الأصلي لأنه ممتع وغير متوقع ولابق إلهم هيك افلام ؛ عاد كنت متوقعة يبدعوا اكتر من النسخة الكورية ؛ وخاصة بإن الفلم ضامن ابطال

Good lord, people are such haters. You'd think by a lot of the reviews here this movie wasn't good. In fact, it's a great movie. It's just like when book nerds complain the movie isn't better than the book, yeah but what's your real point? One's a movie, one's a book. In this case it's a remake of a movie that was Korean. I haven't seen the original, and I don't care to because it's just my preference that I like watching movies where I'm not reading subtitles the whole time, so I'm glad I got to see this story and this movie and couldn't give a flying fuck about the original or if it was or wasn't better than it.

What a waste of a film. Utterly unnecessary. It is the original film hollowed out and stripped of its core. The plot is beat by beat but removed of meaning, and every change is for the worse. This cut was severely edited and cut down from Lee's original three hour cut, but the changes seen in this cut do not inspire hope that his original vision was much better. The original Oldboy used hypnosis to help explain the sudden romance. Here it's just 'we engineered her to have daddy issues'??? The hallway scene is a mess, even the extended version, with Brolin being more of a superman than a desperate man using the constrained environment to his advantage and still only barely surviving. Speaking of, Brolin is nowhere near Choi Min-sik's level. In every form and every element this film is inferior and inert, and there's just no reason to bother with it.