Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

I Saw the Devil Blu-ray Movie Review

Sympathy for the Devil?

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater May 11, 2011

Kim Ji-woon, one of South Korea’s most lauded filmmakers, is a supreme stylist, and his last three films—which have all gotten significant play on the international festival circuit—each offer an intelligent, often beautiful new take on an established genre. 2003’s A Tale of Two Sisters is arguably the best of the K-horror new wave, a lush haunted house drama about mental illness and guilt. 2005’s noir-ish gangster movie A Bittersweet Life violently examines the ethics of the Korean mob, and with 2008’s The Good, The Bad, and the Weird, Kim Ji-woon delivered a big-budget action film that combines the tropes of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western with the comedy and adventure of the Indiana Jones trilogy. (Yes, I’m still calling it a trilogy.) While he’s not often subtle, he’s certainly versatile. With his latest movie, I Saw the Devil, Kim takes on both the serial killer film and what seems to be Korea’s new favorite genre—the revenge epic—for an ultra-violent thriller that’s one part Silence of the Lambs and one part Oldboy, with a little bit of No Country for Old Men thrown in for good measure.

The film sets its grisly, no-holds-barred tone immediately. Opening at night on a snowy, remote highway, a woman (Oh San-ha) waiting for a tow truck looks out the window of her car warily as a van pulls off the side of the road right in front of her. Its driver, the haggard-looking brute Kyung- chul (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik), walks up to her car slowly, taps on the window, and asks if she needs any help. When the woman politely declines, Kyung-chul smashes through the glass, beats her savagely with a tire iron, and drags her off into the night, leaving a bloody trail in the snow. In the following scene, right before Kyung-chul sets to graphically dismembering her, the woman pleads to be spared—she’s pregnant. No dice. The next night, her severed head is found in a stream, and a police manhunt begins. As it turns out, Kyung-chul picked the wrong victim; the woman’s father (Jeon Gook-hwan) is a retired police chief with insider access, and her fiancé, Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun), is a special agent with some serious tae-kwon-do skills. And he’s pissed. Working off a list of suspects provided by his would-be father-in-law, Soo-hyun narrows in on Kyung-chul with one aim: to inflict as much pain as possible. By the end of the film’s first act, he tracks Kyung-chul to a rural greenhouse-cum- torture dungeon, where the predator is preparing to rape and murder his next victim, a young schoolgirl. Soo-hyun busts in, brutally beats Kyung- chul, shoves something down his throat, leaves a wad of cash next to the unconscious killer’s body, and flees the scene.

So, you might ask, what the hell’s going on here? Why would he let the killer go? And where is this film going to go? Without giving too much away, I’ll just say that while Soo-hyun’s endgame is indeed the death of the man who killed his future wife, he plans to take his time getting there, heeding the old adage about revenge being a dish best served cold. Not only does he want to dole out unspeakable physical injury, he also wants to be a psychological thorn in Kyung-chul’s side. Put another way—and I apologize in advance if this sounds crass—before he goes in for the kill, Soo-hyun is determined to be an ass-kicker and a cock-blocker. Let me explain. That object Soo-hyun slipped down Kyung-chul’s throat? A tracking device with a built-in microphone. Whenever Kyung-chul closes in on another potential victim, Soo-hyun shows up out of nowhere, delivers a savage beatdown, rescues the damsel in distress, and leaves the serial killer’s dark, sexually violent urges unfulfilled. It’s the homicidal psychopath’s equivalent of blue balls. Director Kim realizes there’s some black-as-coal humor to be mined here, and even amid the most horrific scenes, he often sneaks in a few uncomfortable laughs. As a visual stylist and choreographer of white-knuckle suspense sequences, Kim is hard to top—there are scenes where I suddenly realized I had been holding my breath, awaiting whatever terror was about to happen next—but the film, as a whole, lacks complexity in its characters and real psychological depth. This is standard-issue revenge thriller stuff, and you could easily apply the usual taglines about “the hunter becoming the hunted” or “the man who must become a monster to fight the monster.” We’ve seen this story countless times before.

But, we’ve never seen it told quite like this. Kim does what he does exceptionally well: edge-of-your-seat tension, moody cinematography, and of course—the film’s big selling point for gore-hungry international audiences—extremely graphic, wince-inducing violence. I don’t think I’d apply the “torture porn” label here—Kim is less cynical and more empathetic towards his characters than splat-pack directors like Eli Roth—but the film has its share of intense, cover-your-eyes-but-peak-through-your-fingers sadism. An initial suspect in the crime gets his genitals bludgeoned by an enormous wrench. A scalpel slices through an Achilles tendon with nauseating slowness. One man’s jaw is pried apart so forcibly that the corners of his mouth begin to tear. Remember the infamous “hallway” fight scene in Oldboy, where Choi Min-sik’s character goes on the rampage with the nail-prying end of a hammer? Kim outdoes it. In a bravura sequence of arterial bloodletting, the director spins his camera around the inside of a moving taxicab while Kyung-chul repeatedly stabs the driver and a passenger. Watching it is like being trapped inside a blood-filled blender. Later, when we’re introduced to “The Butcher”—a cannibal accomplice of Kyung-chul’s—the violence becomes even more depraved.

At the center of all this corporeal carnage are two very different, but equally good actors. Lee Byung-hun plays Soo-hyun with a stoic confidence that never breaks until the final moments of catharsis, when the reality of what he’s had to do to get revenge finally hits him like a sock to the jaw. As for Choi Min-sik—who might remind you of a Korean Benecio del Toro—his Kyung-chul is a raging bull, a total lunatic with a god complex and a capacity for unremorseful evil. “”Who do you think won?” Kyung-chul asks Soo-hyun near the end, but it might as well be director Kim Ji-woon directing the question toward us. The answer? See the Devil and decide for yourself.

I Saw the Devil Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Magnolia Home Entertainment delivers a gorgeous transfer of a gorgeous film, with a 1080p/AVC encode that's sharp, densely colored, and free from any overt compression problems or unnecessary tweaking. The 35mm image looks natural, with a thin-but-rich grain structure and no evidence of DNR. While edge enhancement is occasionally noticeable in certain scenes—sometimes making facial textures seem a bit too crisp—ringing and haloes are kept to a minimum. Overall, clarity is very impressive. See the weft of Kyung-chul's orange sweater—you can even make out the individual bits of fuzz sticking up off of it—and check out the rough patina of the scythe's blade in screenshot #14. Color is deep too, with a haunting blue cast in many scenes, vivid red blood, and balanced, consistent skin tones. Likewise, contrast is strong but not overpumped, and black levels strike a great balance between depth and shadow detail. I really can't dredge up any substantial complaints; the film looks fantastic in high definition.

I Saw the Devil Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As usual, Magnolia has provided two audio options here—the original Korean mix and an English dub, both presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. Don't bother with the dub—it doesn't do the film justice. The Korean track is warm and expansive, and although it's not quite as bombastic as I would've expected given the film's subject matter, there's more than enough diversity in this track to keep all 5.1 channels of your home theater system occupied. The rear channels are mostly used for ambience and score, but there are occasional cross-channel movements, like cars zipping past, glass shattering in all directions, etc. The real allure here is the music. Has anyone else noticed that most Korean films invariably feature lots of jazzy, quasi- flamenco guitar? It's back in I Saw the Devil, but that's only one small part of a terrific score by Korean composer "Mowg," whose MySpace music page lists his genre(s) as "Nu-Jazz / Electro / Experimental." That about sums it up. Trust me, though—the music here is great and it sounds wonderful, with lots of juicy low-end out and clarity throughout the range. Dialogue sits high in the mix, and always sounds clear and unmuffled, with no hisses, pops, or drop-outs. Optional English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles are available in easy-to-read white lettering.

I Saw the Devil Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Do note that there are two separate cuts of the film in existence, the original Korean edit and the slightly shorter International Cut—presented here— which is actually the director's preferred edition. The changes between the two amount to some slightly rearranged scenes, longer shots of violence in the International cut, and a different song playing over the final scene. The biggest omission from this cut is a two-minute sex scene between Kyung- chul and the cannibal's wife, which you'll find—in its entirely—in the deleted scenes included here. Personally, I think cutting out this scene actually strengthens the film, as it plays into the whole idea that Kyung-chul can't get any "release" while Soo-hyun is tracking him.

• Deleted Scenes (SD, 24:50): Most of these excised sequences take place inside the cannibal's house late in the film's second act, including the aforementioned sex scene, which is quite graphic.
• Raw and Rough: Behind the Scenes of I Saw the Devil (SD, 27:06): A great making-of documentary that takes us on set for a look at the filming of the fight scenes, and includes lots of interviews with the film's director and stars. Well worth watching.
• Also From Magnolia Home Entertainment Blu-ray (1080p, 10:24): Includes trailers for Vanishing on 7th Street, Black Death, 13 Assassins, Hobo with a Shotgun, and Rubber, along with a promo for HDNet.

I Saw the Devil Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Rarely has the word "visceral" seemed so appropriate. I Saw the Devil is a brutal, bloody experience, and although it is, in a sense, "just another" Korean revenge movie, Kim Ji-woon's deft directorial hand elevates the material into a film that's as memorable as it is intense. I certainly won't be forgetting that Achilles tendon-cutting scene anytime soon. It should go without saying that I Saw the Devil is not for everyone, but Asian film fans drawn to the dark and violent will certainly want to check it out. Recommended!