[Rin on...] I Saw the Devil

     I'll admit, I'm kind of in love with cinema from Asian countries. Japan of course, China, and more recently, Korea. I find that their dedication to the story-line, to the music, to the acting itself just seems so much more intense than our Hollywood counterparts. It's dedication on film. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, good films we've made and bad films they've made... But, well, you'd have to share my love to understand. And yes, I know I'm biased.
     I Saw the Devil is a Korean horror/thriller by director Kim Ji-Woon, with brilliant screenplay by Hoon-jung Park. The film stars Oldboy's Min-Sik Choi and The Good, The Bad and The Weird's beautiful Byung-hun Lee. In short: Byung-hun's character, Soo-hyeon, goes after his fiancé's deranged killer. Soo-hyeon is a special agent, so you'll see a bit of fancy footwork, all very, very impressive. As an article I read stated perfectly, "He’s also an imposing physical presence, maneuvering through a series of fights and cat-and-mouse chase scenes with authentic stunt-work, which explains why Hollywood tried to utilize, but ultimately wasted, his talents to play Storm Shadow in 2009’s poorly executed G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra." ...But we're not going to talk about that one.

     Kyung-chul, Min-Sik's character, is a performance to reckon with. He flips between screaming his lungs out at whatever torture darling Soo-hyeon has cooked up, to laughing maniacally at his own demented serial killing ways, to being completely dead-pan in the face of pain or fear. You don't know exactly how to feel about him, but I do believe it's intentional. He's crazy, remember? It's a stellar performance of human nature gone wrong, one I wouldn't recommend missing.

     Now, the fangirl in me was all about Byung-hun Lee's performance. If he was on screen, I probably wasn't blinking. Thankfully, my fangirliness wasn't in vain. Byung-hun performs through Soo-hyeon's emotional states flawlessly. I cannot extrapolate well enough on that. The perfection lay in simplicity. For example, the scene where they discover one of the bodies from Kyung-chul's escapades. The crime scene is in chaos, since Soo-hyeon's fiancé is also the police chief's daughter. The press is there, flooding the scene with photographs. [Wait, isn't that contamination of evidence?] The police chief is bordering on an emotional breakdown. They find the head and you see Soo-hyeon pull up, nervously making his way closer to the crime-scene. When he finally realizes it is, afterall, his missing fiancé, he's quiet. He doesn't erupt into screams, doesn't slam his fists into the ground, doesn't curse the sky. He blinks. You can tell his breathing is growing ragged. He puts a hand over his mouth and a few tears fall from his eyes. He looks, more than anything, lost.    
     As you watch him seek out his fiancé's killer, watch him dish out gore-tastic vengeance, you watch his character change. It's as if you can watch him harden his heart, his soul. I imagine... That's what it takes. Does it take a monster to catch a monster? Perhaps. And there's no doubt that Min-Sik's character is a monster at its finest. Rape, mutilation, psychological torment, you name it--he inflicts on his victims. 

     

    It was, beautiful. I cannot explain well enough how much of the character's feeling and emotion is spoken silently, spoken only through the look in his eyes, through his subtle facial expressions. It is acting as it should be.
     Needless to say, it's an action-packed 141 minutes. There's gore aplenty, for those of you who are looking for that. There's grade-A acting, beautiful cinematics, excellent fight sequences, and perhaps most importantly, something said about human nature. When you lose the thing you love the most, does it change you? Does it change you to seek revenge? It begs the question of whether revenge is worth it. I'll leave that up to you to answer.


Watch the trailer here.