As surefire summer blockbusters pitches go, 'violent rampaging odyssey featuring scenes of octopus-eating and incest' probably isn't at the top of most producers to-do lists. All of which only highlights the strangeness of Steven Spielberg and Will Smith's latest project - a 'reimagining' of Korean thriller 'Oldboy.'

It's a project that's been mooted around Hollywood for a couple of years now, at one point tentatively having Martin Scorsese attached to direct. Now that Spielberg is involved, however, there is a worry that the essence of the original - a frenzied cinematic assault on the senses, albeit with a rubbish plot twist - is going to be toned down a little. Cue Will Smith winking to camera and making sassy wisecracks as he staves a man's head in with a claw hammer?

 

It's not as if big-budget movies featuring name-stars have to be cheerful affairs - witness 'The Dark Knight', a film so relentlessly brooding it probably locks itself in it's room every night, writing poetry and listening to My Chemical Romance CDs in between shouting 'I hate you, Mum' whenever it's called downstairs for tea.

 

Nevertheless, if the new 'Oldboy' even sticks slightly to the tone of the original, this really isn't going to be sort of thing that Mr and Mrs Two-Films-A-Year will want to go and check out on Orange Wednesday.

 

Also worth considering is the fact that both Smith and Spielberg could do with a decent project. Spielberg's last - 'Indiana Jones And The Shit-Upon Childhood Memories' - was a lame duck, and his upcoming Tintin movie doesn't exactly sound like a belter. Smith, meanwhile, could well do with erasing 'I Am Legend' from the public memory, a film with so many gaping logic holes it almost opened up a rip in the fabric of reality itself.

 

By CJ