Crucially, when we first see Dae-su inside his prison, Park shoots from the hallway, rather than from inside the room, and it’s also established that Dae-su has already been living there for two months. There’s no effort to get the audience to empathize with Dae-su the way there is in the remake, because Park recognizes the absurdity of the situation, and makes us laugh at Dae-su’s predicament. That being said, I still don’t think this is all that much better…

I haven't seen the original, but I was led to believe that this version was a total dumpster fire, which just isn't the case. Sure, it's pretty dumb at times, and Spike is a terrible fit for the material (he keeps trying to give a kind of prestige treatment to what's essentially a cartoon, which just doesn't fit a lot of the time (mice, hammer oner, Samuel L. Jackson's hair)), but I'd be lying if I said that this wasn't…