I Saw The Devil (2010)
The notion of vengeance as an all-consuming fire is anything but new, especially in the realm of South Korean cinema (see also: The Vengeance Trilogy by Park Chan-wook, and yes you already knew that.) American films often play with the idea that an avenger can perpetrate bloody retribution and either keep their soul intact (i.e. Taken) or be redeemed by noble sacrifice (think Man On Fire.) I Saw The Devil, directed by genre-mashup maven Kim Ji-woon, presents a character who thinks he’s a Korean Creasy but turns out to be another Oh Dae-su.
Kim Soo-Hyun (Lee Byung-Hun, The Good, The Bad, And The Weird and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) is a bad-ass government agent whose pregnant fiancee dies cruelly at the hands of serial killer Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik, Oldboy, Sympathy For Lady Vengeance.) Thirsty for blood, Soo-hyun seeks the murderer out and, after brutalizing a few innocent suspects, finds the target for his sadistic plan of revenge. Kyung-chul, however, proves to be a formidable opponent for South Korean James Bond, and thus a simple plan of vengeance becomes the bloodiest downward spiral imaginable.
It’s a credit to Ji-woon and screenwriter Park Hoon-jung that I Saw The Devil has laughs, action, and pathos to go along with much bloodletting.* Soo-hyun is both reprehensible and sympathetic; Kyung-chul is truly monstrous, but his non-the-wiser family still figures in the proceedings. And while the Grand Guignol style of I Saw The Devil nods heavily to both Chan-wook’s Oldboy and Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, it ends by suggesting an unsettling question that would fit in the more subtle Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance: in the messy business of vendetta, who is the titular Devil?
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*It’s also informational- apparently, South Korea is like Miami when it comes to serial killers.
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