I Saw the Devil (2010)

Still looking for a movie that would make me raise a bit the average rating I went again towards the East = Korea. It seems I'm still unlucky. More, I guess I'm convinced that I should find time to see at least two movies in a week, because I don't know if "I Saw the Devil" is the best option to discuss ...

Why I wanted to avoid this entry ? Not because it's a bad movie, but I guess it's one that you don't want to see twice. Or at least to forget rapidly. I had the luck to see the "censored" version. Just to make sure from start that the violence level of the movie is well understood, and it's a violence that .. you can fell = it's a bit hard to overpass as in, I don't know, "Saw" or other productions made in Hollywood, which surpass as graphic level what I've seen here but most often is just dumb excess of gore. It means that given the subject of the current movie it somehow makes sense, but you still don't want to see that on screen ...

The story is relatively simple and linear. We have a serial killer who makes the error to pick as victim the wife of an agent in the Korean intelligence, and altogether the daughter of a former police chief. After the victim's head is found (and I'll limit the "graphic" description to this but I felt the need for a "warning") the grieving husband takes two weeks of vacation. Which vacation transforms into a hunt for the killer. The agent finds the target relatively fast, but instead finishing him quickly, decides that it's not enough to kill him and starts a cat and mouse game in which beats him badly and releases him just to catch him again and start the following punishment round.

Usually, pretty much every complex "revenge story" is quite catchy. In the current case the murder is so horrible that maybe you won't want to finish with the killer immediatly. Or at least, to reference another Korean series with a similar background - "The Vengeance Trilogy", but by another director, you would like an explanation, however dark it might be as in "Oldboy". Light spoiler - this doesn't happen, or as the title suggests is just "pure evil" up to the end. Consequently, at least for a part of the movie you're tempted to take the side of the agent who's in the mood for an "eye for an eye" revenge, especially since (another light spoiler) "the evil" starts getting more grotesque ramifications. The final though transforms the movie from a revenge story into an anti-revenge story. But I've said already too much from the story ... so I'll stop here with that.

In a way, besides "Oldboy" or "Lady Vengeance" from the Korean area, it reminded me of "Silence of the Lambs", but at a more gruesome level. The difference is again, the feeling that's left in the end. The conclusion is that I doubt this is a movie that can be liked, subjectively speaking. More than getting over the violence and sadism, it's about being fine with the outcome, because you start normally by sympathizing in a way with the one who wants payback .. but if this is in the beginning about the need for revenge, in the end it gets more towards the need of inner comfort, and apparently this is quite far from the Talion law ...

Rating: 3 out of 5