 After tons of requests over the years, I finally sat down and watched Old Boy. The 2013 American version. You're welcome. Okay, everybody who recommended this I think was talking about the original 2003 movie, Old Boy, but this one was free on Netflix and I was told recently by a buddy that this one is awesome too. Maybe not as good as the original but still worth seeing. And I'm glad I did. I freaking dug it. I've already watched it twice. And no, I haven't seen the original yet but I will. I promise I'm actually really looking forward to it. That said, I'm gonna briefly talk about what I thought about this film with Josh Brolin and Scarlet Witch yourself, Elizabeth Olsen. Side note about Olsen, every time she started to speak I kept waiting for that crappy accent she sometimes does as Scarlet Witch to show through. It didn't, it didn't, but it still threw me off. I went into this film knowing absolutely nothing about it, not a single drop of information has gone into my brain about either version of this film. So if the original is different than this one, I have no idea. I'm excited to watch. As it stands, I took this movie at face value, not comparing it to anything else. And I think that's maybe why I enjoyed it more than someone who say, watch the original back in the day and then tried to give this one of you, probably wouldn't work out that well. And that's understandable. Josh Brolin plays a character named Joe Doucette. He's a piece of shit alcoholic who has nothing going in his life. He has an ex-wife and an estranged daughter and not much else. Although he did just land a big marketing gig, which seconds later he botched by hitting on the woman that he was pitching to. This leads him to inevitably start drinking again as he stumbles through alleyways and finds himself blacking out, waking up inside of a seedy hotel room that's not actually a hotel room at all. The first 30 or 40 minutes of this movie are fantastic. It reminded me of another gem that not many people watched called the Contamante Cristo. Half of the film is an imprisonment story trying to get out and the second half is all about revenge. Spike Lee's never one to shy away from political commentary. Here he's very subdued though. He does it in a more nuanced way. Really just kind of showing background events as Josh Brolin ages inside of this prison he's in. Watching different presidents come and go from power, different major events that took place that Brolin doesn't even get to witness as he's stuck in his own little world. After getting out of this hellscape that he's been in for 20 years, he finds out that this is just the beginning of the story, of the torture that he's gonna have to go through. As now, a carrot is dangled in front of him in the form of his daughter. He has only a few days to save her and in order to do so has to crack a mystery of the man who put him in prison to begin with. There's only one scene in this whole movie that I found so stupid and cheesy and unfortunately takes place right after he gets freed from prison and that's him beating up a bunch of football players out on the field. For some reason Spike Lee pumps the saturation up to like a thousand. I assume he does this because Joe has been isolated for so long so the real world has the sun beaming and everything looks bright and punchy but it comes off very campy looking and the fight itself is so over the top and stupid. Thankfully though after that moment the rest of it I thought worked really well. One of my favorite moments of the movie is how he tracks down the location he was at for those 20 years which is to go on a Chef Ramsay-esque taste-testing adventure trying to find that specific food he had been fed all those years. And this wouldn't be a real movie without having Samuel L. Jackson in this somewhere. I was laughing when he showed up. This actor is in everything and he's always awesome. The film always gets a bit more elevated when Samuel motherfucking Jackson shows up. As an extra bonus for you MCU Scarlet Witchstands out there, get to see Elizabeth Olsen naked in this. Yeah that was a treat to the eyes I wasn't expecting. A surprise to be sure but a welcome one. I'm gonna make like a little cat and go out on a limb here and say the original Old Boy was known for some pretty badass action. In this version there's really only one big action set piece. I was fine with that. The mystery, the twist, the turns, the thrills was enough to keep me engaged, keep me on the hook. I like that Spike Lee does it all with a one take or at least the illusion of a one take following along as Joe beats the living shit out of these guys with nothing more than a crowbar or whatever he finds lying around a hammer. Just another guy comes. It was kind of like that. It was kind of just like that. The villain in this is awesome too, Adrian, who's played by Charlote Capley. I love this guy. He's got all these like weird tics and he's just nervous and depressed and his backstory is a brutal one. It's good stuff. I went to IMDb and saw this movie at like a 5.3 so clearly I'm a little bit more of a minority on this one. I enjoyed it. If you did see this movie and you liked it, let me know in the comments. If you hated it, tell me I'm wrong. Win me over to the dark side. Well no, you're not going to. I like it but that's fine. We have different opinions. I'd love to hear yours. Maybe think about subscribing if you haven't. I post movie and TV show related content each and every week. Would love to have more people stop by. All right, take care. Fun fact, I was planning on watching the 2003 original Old Boy First but I couldn't find it on streaming platforms. I could do a Google search but that's a lot of work. Maybe let me know in the comments where I can watch the original and I will gladly do so. Old Boy, this one was available on Netflix so I just gave it a shot and I'm glad I did. Maybe you could think about joining me on Patreon at patreon.com slash edamdosmovies. Give that a shot. Throw a dollar or five dollars a month, say Adam. Like what you're doing, here's a little cash to keep you going and I would genuinely appreciate it. Thanks either way for your time.