by Marco Tremble
with Min-Sik Choi, Byung-Hun Lee; directed by Jee-Woon Kim running time 144 min.
I Saw the Devil is what can be only described as one of the most extreme revenge thrillers I’ve seen. It all starts on a dark snow night with a lone young woman stuck in a car on the phone to her fiancé…
Normal enough you might think? But a school bus that drives past has what can only be one of the most demented villains I’ve come across. He really does make Hannibal Lecter look like a day care assistant! Still no shocks yet, the conversation between the happy couple continues as the driver of the bus surveys the car and eventually asks if she wants help with her flat tire.
It still seems all innocent just now as the girl declines his offer of help and finishes her call with her finance that is I forgot to say an agent with South Korea’s Military Intelligence Agency. This begins to set up everything for the rest of the movie as once the call is finished the man in the bus attacks the car and the girl in the most brutal fashion with a very heavy hammer…
The scene cuts to what can only be described as a torture chamber where the killer begins his murderous act that eventually kicks the movie off. I’m not going to go in to the “gory” details only to say there is the usual pleading for life which is ignored and the revelation that his victim is pregnant all to no avail as the girl is dispatched and disposed of.
Then segue to a scene of a child walking through a field by a stream beneath a motorway overpass, the child beating the grass with a stick and eventually finding a black plastic bag. This kicks off the discovery of the victims many body parts and starts what can only be described as the most sadistic hunt for revenge.
I don’t want to give the whole plot away, as it needs to be seen to be believed, and there are some fantastic set pieces to behold. Needless to say the so called hero of the film uses his skills and some pilfered technology to enact a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the killer. As with all revenge movies the ending is bittersweet for the hero and how he has fallen, the moral being that it is still a dark motive and ultimately unfulfilling as his grief finally takes hold.
The film itself has a measured pace, which keeps the viewer interested and the action however brief and brutal is necessary. It provides punctuation marks for the grief and horror of a roller coaster of a movie.