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Bringing a hammer into a fight is always going to be trouble. Tools in general have a way of elevating a fight into something beyond your typical frat boy push-fests. Crowbars? Bolt cutters? Electric sanders? These are weapons best left at home, far away from drunken bar room scuffles. After all, one should never operate machinery while under the influence.

Anyway, when it comes to hammer fights, there is but one master:

If you’ve never seen Oldboy, do yourself a favor and settle in for a night of psychological scarring sometime soon. The film is full of jaw-dropping moments, in fact, much of this movie makes the above scene look fairly tame in comparison.

Naturally, for this reason the rumors of a Spielberg remake were causing me more pain than a mallet to the forehead. An American version would never be able to hold a candle to the horrors contained in the original — Oldboy makes the Saw series look like Fear Factor reruns. Western cinema simply has not mastered — and indeed, lacks the interest in mastering — “fucked up” in quite the same special way Asian film-making has.

A remake could never fully grasp the dark themes of the original material, and any attempt to recreate the film while losing some of its more stomach-churning elements would leave the impact of the movie, let alone the core plot, in tatters. Especially considering this fact — Will Smith was attached to play the lead role. Hearing that, I could suddenly relate to the alien pilot getting its head punched in by Captain Steven Hiller in Independence Day.

Thankfully, we can all breathe a sigh of relief as the rumors were squashed late last year — the project is dead. If there is anything beautiful left in the world (and a viewing of Oldboy may very well demolish that notion in your mind), Spielberg merely bought the rights to it so nobody else would be able to drag the source material through the mud.