If you haven't seen Korean director Chan-Woo Park's revenge masterpiece Oldboy you are really missing out. It is perfectly twisted and dark, right up there with Death Wish. Trust me, it will alter how you see the whole genre and give you a very sever case of The Creeps.
Above is the trailer for the Spike Lee interpretation of that movie. Below is the trailer for the original. Granted, there is a lot lost culturally between Korea and America. So some differences can be expected. The main problem I have is, is that it looks more like Josh Brolin's version of Taken as opposed to Spike Lee's take on Chan-Woo Park's Oldboy. What about you, have you seen the original film? What do you think about the look of the American version? Below is the trailer for the original.
I agree that Brolin’s vengefulness–from what I can see here–seems lucid and calculating, not as feral and unpredictably unhinged as Min-sik Choi becomes in Park’s version. To me, it was that weird quality of his emotional derangement that helped elevate Oldboy above the usual revenge-hero, so beloved but also ubiquitous in Asian thrillers and action movies.