I Saw the Devil Review: There Will Be Blood

An unnaturally long take. A driver’s POV behind the wheel of a vehicle traversing a snowy road. Gentle, disarming music plays from the radio. Hands calmly grip the steering wheel, adjust the rearview. These opening moments of I Saw the Devil (a wink to the Jonathan Glazer-directed Radiohead video for “Karma Police”) are also the only chance you have to breathe in this Korean revenge tale – an explosively visceral and often brilliant, if ultimately overwrought, descent into madness.

The first reel of I Saw the Devil is as gripping as any film can get and casts a dark tone over the rest of the proceedings. Kim Soo-Hyeon is a by-the-book Special Investgations agent who, on this particular night, keeps his fiancée Joo-yeon company on the cell phone as she awaits a tow truck to assist her with a flat tire on a lonesome country back road. After their conversation, she is brutally attacked by Kyung-Chul, a burgeoning serial killer with a penchant for young women. The attack, her eventual murder, and its immediate aftermath stack on top of each other resulting in a harrowing, bloody affair that resonates through the rest of the film. Joo-yeon’s torturous murder is shown in grotesque detail but unlike the Saw or Hostel franchises that invite you to revel in the gore, here we are disgusted by it. Joo-yeon’s father is also the Section Chief of the agency and discloses to Kim Soo-Hyeon that they have whittled down the suspect list to four men. Kim goes on bereavement leave for two weeks, where he begins his endeavor in earnest, to find Joo-yeon’s killer.

Kim’s vigilante crusade eventually leads him to Kyung-Chul, but rather than kill him, he forces him to swallow a GPS transmitter after a slickly shot fight sequence inside of a worn out greenhouse. With the device in play, Kyung-Chul becomes Kim’s unwitting puppet; whenever Kyung-Chul attempts to kill again, Kim steps in manically torturing him and physically handicapping him in some diabolical way. The stakes get higher with each subsequent attack and Kyung-Chul plummets further into madness as Kim breaks him physically and mentally. All does not go according to plan, however, and Kyung-Chul turns the tables on Kim in one of the larger contrivances of the movie. Interestingly enough, the “revenge” portion of the film could have easily ended at this point, which would allow time to see the aftermath of Kim’s spree of violence and the consequences of his actions, but instead the picture continues to try and juggle as many balls as possible, culminating in a still-satisfying, but ultimately roundabout climax.

Make no mistake about it: I Saw the Devil is intensely violent, certainly one of the most horrifically gory films of recent memory. While this is certainly director Jee-Woon Kim’s strength, he is firing on all cylinders here, taking what recent American Horror deems as escapism and giving it the macabre bend it so desperately needs. Even at its vengeful best, there is nothing to revel in with the on-screen violence; it is bravely unflinching and painfully unglamorous. The film is also bloody gorgeous to look at, full of inventive framing and beautifully bleak cinematography. The blue/black hues of saturation married with night exteriors of lazy falling snow recall the ominous tone of Let the Right One In (also a Magnet release). The larger set pieces (the cannibal’s house, the greenhouse) are executed with exacting purpose, but never feel over-the-top. Performances all-around are solid-to-mesmerizing, with Min-Sik Choi delivering what is arguably his best, but most certainly his most unsettling, performance to date.

Many foreign films and more specifically many films from the Far East suffer from flaws in the logic of the narrative, sometimes irrevocably so. I Saw the Devil is dealt the same card but mercifully this does not undo the movie itself. Perhaps the logic of the film rings false so loudly because we are dealing with a murder investigation, a crime story where the puzzle pieces need to make sense and need to fit appropriately. This is the “Achilles heel” of the film (when you see it, you will understand why I quoted that…boy, will you ever…). From the get-go the case is something that is glossed over when it is revealed to Kim that they have four main suspects. How? Based on what? Further, Kim has time to shake down the suspects alone, yet the entire police force cannot round the suspects up quicker to bring them in for questioning, as is normal procedure? Other fallacies pepper the narrative and mar the quality of the film throughout its runtime: Kyung-Chul has a son who knows where he lives – a house wrapped in plastic, full of instruments and tools meant to kill, so how could he possibly be unaware that his father is a killer? All serial killers have an MO and so does Kyung-Chul, though the first time he and Kim meet, Kyung-Chul is about to murder a girl in a greenhouse which is completely out of character for how he operates. It’s these issues that bog the film down and hold it back from being a quiet masterpiece.

But perhaps the most unfortunate flaw of the film is how its theme gets lost and becomes irrelevant. The picture’s title and American tag line (“Evil lives inside”) suggests that to fight the devil, Kim must become the devil, and while fleeting moments in the film touch on this idea, it is never fully explored. What makes the narrative of a similarly themed film like The Dark Knight so compelling is that it does deal with this issue, full bore; The Joker pushes Batman until he can no longer play his game because the line between good and evil has blurred so heavily, that the Bat can’t make out which side he’s truly on. I Saw the Devil wants to ask this question and deal with its moral gray area, but instead focuses more on seeing what kind of fucked up shit is going to happen next; not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly more superficial than it needs to be.

With a run time of 147 minutes and change, I Saw the Devil could have very easily addressed all of its wrinkles and unveiled itself an unforgettable piece of cinema, but instead it just flirts with the idea and the end result is a flawed masterpiece. There are worse things to be, for sure, but knowing the greatness that could have been achieved with a nip and a tuck to the story dampens ever-so-slightly what has ended up being the first must-see film of 2011.

Images courtesy of Magnolia Pictures and IMDbPro