Dir. Jee-Woon Kim, South Korea, 2010, 138mins – in Korean with subtitles – DVD with limited theatrical release
Cast: Byung-hun Lee, Min-sik Choi, Ho-jin Jeon
Review by Christopher Upton
They say revenge is a dish best served cold. It’s hard to tell exactly where Korean filmmakers stand on this comment. In some of the revenge thrillers from the country, and there are a lot of them, the revenge can take years to plan expertly causing the maximum amount of distress to the victim, as in seminal revenge thriller Old Boy. In others, like A Bittersweet Life, the revenge is more instant and often a lot bloodier.
You’re probably wondering where I Saw The Devil stands then? It’s tricky to pin down exactly what type of revenge you’re seeing during the initial stages. Time is never qualified and it could have taken months for Kim (Byung-hun Lee), to track down the object of his revenge. The killer in question, Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi), has a penchant for raping and dismembering his victims and leaving them floating around in rivers. This is how Kim happens upon his fiancée and his unborn son, which is what sets off the stream of unceasing cat and mouse action and extreme violence.
If it does take a while for Kim to catch up with his wife’s killer, you could see how it would be a slow calculated revenge, but once he gets hold of him there isn’t anything slow about the revenge he enacts. And just when you think everything is over, director Jee-woon throws everything off in a completely different direction, offering up the chance for a whole different journey to unfold. The killer and his pursuer become engaged in a game of catch and release, with every meeting ramping up the extremeness of the assaults.
The extreme violence that I Saw The Devil contains will probably put some audiences off, but if you can persevere with it, then it will keep you amazed and entertained throughout its lengthy running time. The direction is oppressive and dark and acts as a perfect companion to the actions of the onscreen characters.
Jee-woon also manages to create a perfectly dual sided protagonist in the shape of Kim, who is torn between his desire for revenge and the knowledge that he is turning into a monster himself. This conflict doesn’t always come together in such films, and more often than not the characters often look like they’re enjoying it a bit too much. In contrast, the revenge here is so calm and calculated, that it creates two entirely different people: a detached monster committing the atrocities, and a husband struggling with his genuine, unrelenting grief. The ability to combine them equally into one person is a triumph here on behalf of both the actor and director.
I Saw The Devil is exceptionally well written and brilliantly directed, but unfortunately because of it’s fascination with mutilation it seems doomed to find itself a niche audience; the kind who participate in obsessive searches for the more violent kind of film and who find no fault with the Saw canon. This is a shame because this film deserves more, as it has at its core a finely crafted thriller; it’s just buried underneath a pile of corpses.
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