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I Saw the Devil
2010; directed by Kim Ji-Woon

Breaking away from the usual antics of semi-legibly writing about Hong Kong movies, your friendly neighborhood reviewer gathered the multitude of empty beer cans strewn about the home office to scrape up a few bucks and ventured out on a typically cold Minneapolis winter evening, braving skinny jean-clad hipsters and blowing snow to head down to the local arthouse, where I took a virtual detour to South Korea via I Saw the Devil, a cat-and-mouse thriller that goes down the well-worn path of a cop blurring the line between justice and vengeance. Even though it's not the most original premise in the world, director Kim Ji-Woon has delivered a very compelling picture that doesn't skimp on delivering its' share of visceral thrills.

I Saw the Devil  I Saw the Devil

I Saw the Devil begins with the abduction and graphic killing of a young woman by the serial killer Hyung (Choi Min-Sik). Setting the grim tone of the film, Hyung's methods are shown in close-up, unflinching, and grotesque fashion. It's something that you should rightly turn away from, yet it's still bizarrely and utterly fascinating, in the vein of the better Hong Kong Category III shockers like The Untold Story and Dr. Lamb. Throughout the whole movie, Kim Ji-Woon seems to delight in playing with the audience, straddling that fine line between base emotional excitement and outright exploitation, knowing when to unflinchingly show gore without going overboard with it to the point that the claret becomes ridiculous, ala "torture porn" pictures such as Hostel.

I Saw the Devil  I Saw the Devil

Getting back to the plot, the young woman is the fiance of special agent Joon (Lee Byung-Hun), who wastes no time in launching his own "special" investigation into the murder. By "special", I mean it's Joon going through a list of suspects and using not-so-subtle methods like the old standby of a monkey wrench to the testicles, until he closes in on Hyung. Early on, Kim Ji-Woon establishes that there's not much of a difference between Joon and Hyung, which brought is clearly forth to the audience as Joon begins to institute a "catch and release" game with Hyung, increasing the violence against the killer and the outright blind rage of which it is dealt, until the tables are turned during the finale.

I Saw the Devil  I Saw the Devil

But at that point, one has to question who is the real hero and villain here. As a rapist and killer, Hyung still remains the forerunner for the villain role, but as the movie progresses, Joon goes further into his own pain and psychosis, going so far as to invent an execution method that is almost beyond chilling in the matter-of-fact method in which it delivers extremely bloody vengeance, Kim Ji-Woon delivers what many directors have attempted to accomplish and failed to do. I Saw the Devil is that rare motion picture that truly blurs the lines between good and evil.

RATING: 7

I Saw the Devil

DVD Information

This DVD, from Magnolia's genre label Magnet, uses the international cut of the film, running at 142 minutes, and is presented via an anamorhic widescreen picture at a 1.85:1 ratio. Audiowise, there are Korean and English-dubbed tracks available, which are encoded in Dolby 5.1, with English and Spanish subtitles. Extras include several trailers, a twenty-seven minute making-of featurette that is in Korean with English subtitles, and twenty-five minutes worth of deleted scenes, which are also subtitled. The scenes look to have been taken from a workprint, complete with time code and poorer video quality, but it is still a nice bonus feature.

The DVD and Blu-ray are available at Amazon.

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