Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2014

Haven’t seen Park Chan-wook’s 2003 existential horror cult movie, so I can’t say whether it deserved the dubious Hollywood remake treatment. But I’m pretty sure that Spike Lee was not the director to do it. After being imprisoned for 20 years for no reason, a miscast Josh Brolin is as inexplicably released, whereupon he embarks on a brutal quest to identify his tormentors and exact revenge. Lee gets in a few interesting stylistic licks, but he’s in work-for-hire mode. Also Samuel L. Jackson, Elizabeth Olsen and Sharlto Copley. Twisted, grim and gruesome, call this feel-bad movie an accomplished disappointment. (104 min)