Josh Brolin has been a busy man of late what-with his interpretation of a young Agent K in MIB 3 and his recently completed period gangster piece Gangster Squad.
He found time to talk to Total Film, primarily about the latter, but also touched on Spike Lee’s upcoming remake of Park Chan-Wook’s classic Old Boy in which Brolin is set to play the protagonist:
Do you expect your Old Boy will be as mental as Park Chan-Wook’s original?
I don’t know… Spike Lee’s doing Old Boy and it’s different and the same. I wrote an email to Park, who I really love, when I tried to get him to direct Jonah Hex. I was like, “If you’re not completely into this, then we’ll find something else to do together.” But then I said, “I want your blessing to do Old Boy.” He wrote back this beautiful letter and it said, “I love remakes and I think it’s great, just don’t do it exactly like we did.”
The Asian auteur is right. Remakes can be good, but rather than being remade shot-for-shot, like most remakes these days seem to be, they need to be translated. Whether the film is being remade for an audience in a new country or being made for an audience of a new generation, the story needs to be translated and embedded into the cultural context and setting of that place/time, rather than simply being super imposed from one time or place to another. If Spike Lee can achieve this then I believe his Old Boy could be a bonafide classic.
I’d also love to see what Park Chan-Wook could have done with Jonah Hex. I suspect it would have been substantially less shit.
Source: Total Film
