Review: I Saw the Devil (2010)
Directed by Kim Jee-woon; screenplay by Park Hoon-jung; starring Lee Byung-hun, Choi Min-sik and Jeon Gook-hwan.
Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil is a grisly entry to the, at this point, well-trod ground of the Korean Revenge-Thriller Genre. Released in 2010 it draws on the legacy of Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy, a series of similarly gothic films released earlier that decade and is preceded by such films as The Villainess or The Handmaiden. Common to the genre is an emphasis on blurring the line between victim and perpetrator by forcing the viewer to align themselves with both the protagonist and antagonist. Texts of the genre tend to take pleasure in drenching both these opposing forces in a similar amount of blood and viscera, almost in an attempt to baptise them in similar, if not the same, waters.
This genre can be hard to pin down at times, however, and difficult to describe as an enjoyable one. It’s by no means conventional and for that its entries are always compelling viewing, but occasionally it appears difficult to see much beyond that. The notion of the good man lowering himself to the baseness of the bad is a tale as old as time and when the only variation added is in how the protagonist gets to their inevitably morally murky victory, it’s easy to see a bit of thematic saturation creeping looming. And this is perhaps why I’m conflicted about Kim Jee-woon’s admitted technical marvel.
At the film’s heart are two men on either side of the law, Jang Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik), a serial killer and rapist, and Kim Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun), an agent for the National Intelligence Service. In an opening scene, Jang approaches Kim’s wife Jang Joo-yun (Oh San-ha) stuck at the side of the road waiting for a tow truck and offers to fix her tire. After she refuses his help, though, Kang attacks and kidnaps her, all the while Kim sits on the other end of the phone, trying to reassure his wife (lock the doors and just wait for the tow truck, he tells her repeatedly.) When Jang Joo-yun’s dismembered body is found by local police, Kim vows to enact vengeance upon his wife’s killer and begins tracking Jang Kyung-chul down.
Interestingly, the film doesn’t take its time with the preamble of Kim’s hunt. Rather Kim, with his unique set of action-hero-like skills, tracks Jang down and discerns his hand in his wife’s murder with relative ease such that the real conflict of the film can begin in earnest. Slowly, it is revealed that Kim isn’t content with the simple eye-for-an-eye flavour of vengeance. Even after catching Jang in the act of committing an atrocity against a young girl, Kim appears content to simply brutalise then release the monster back into world so that the hunt can begin anew.
In a pivotal scene Kim reveals, whilst sitting on a hospital bed just metres away from an incapacitated Jang (whom he fully intends to release back into the wild once he’s conscious) that this cycle of catching and releasing will only stop when the weight on his own chest is lessened, and it becomes clear that that isn’t going to happen any time soon. Not content with simple revenge, Kim seeks another kind of retribution - this kind transcends physical pain (though notably doesn't preclude it, with a particularly grisly instance of Hostel-like tendon slashing included) and requires a complete defeat of his mortal enemy, regardless of whether it might end in a pyrrhic victory. And a pyrrhic victory it will be. Kim’s vengeful hunt is often bloody but not just because of his acts of violence against Jang. Frequently featured in Kim’s campaign is an apathy towards the violence he enable Jang to himself enact and it’s through this it’s easy to see what Kim Jee-woon is driving at thematically. Kim’s vengeance has consumed him and so will it too consume everything around him.
What I haven’t mentioned so far, though, is the Korean Revenge-Thriller’s secondary dependence on actor Choi Min-sik and his tendency towards playing the depraved – and failing that simply unhinged. In Oldboy it’s Oh Dae-su, in Sympathy for Lady Vengeance it’s Baek Han-sang and now, in I Saw the Devil it’s Jang Kyung-chul. In this latter case, Choi’s Jang is a veritable beast, revelling in the pain he inflicts but frustratingly ephemeral when it comes to his motivations. In one moment, the man is a force of psychopathic nature, but in the next he’s like a petulant child and Choi plays this with a kind of veteran efficiency.
But this efficiency is maybe my biggest gripe with the film. Everything here is compelling, yes, but it’s so well-trod and planned it feels like it’s bordering on exploitative. Of course, violence and depravity are key to the genre but at times it feels utterly unnecessary and indulgent. We don’t need to see sexual assault played out over and over to understand the monstrosity that is Jang, as much as some may think the continued exposure to him is bold. It’s the same with the film’s tendency to linger on the feminine physique and avert its gaze from the male, over and over. It’s as if the film can’t construct any emotional beats without depending heavily upon the grotesque.
Subtlety isn’t what is called for here, I understand that, but maybe just some a greater imagination is required?
Watched on 27th April 2021