Horrorfest 2011: I Saw the Devil

I SAW THE DEVIL is a 2010 Korean film about a secret agent (Lee Byung-hun) whose pregnant wife (Oh San-ha) is murdered by a serial killer (Choi Min-sik). The secret agent takes a couple weeks off work and sets out to find the killer. At first we think the secret agent has just gone vigilante, but after he captures the killer and lets him go, only to hunt him again, we realize things are a little more complicated.

The secret agent wants revenge, but he also wants to torture the killer. Using GPS tracking technology, the secret agent is never far behind the killer, and shows up just in time to stop the killer from striking again, a couple of times. A couple of other times he doesn't show up quite on time. Each time, after a severe maiming and beating, he lets the killer go, only to pursue him some more.

This premise is both the strength of the film and the drawback. On one hand, the idea of this willful game of cat and mouse in the name of revenge is interesting. This is more than just a guy torturing another guy in an isolated location. It becomes a sort of hunting game. On the other hand, it stretches the audience's suspension of disbelief pretty thin. There are so many opportunities for disaster in this plan, including collateral damage, that it becomes hard to believe that the revenge fueled secret agent would take the risks he takes just to torture the killer.

Because of the collateral damage, for the first half of the movie I was thinking the secret agent isn't much better than the killer he's hunting. Yes, the killer is insane and evil and must be stopped, but the secret agent is presumably sane and has some kind of morals while also allowing the killer to be out on the loose, thus putting other people (just like his late wife) in danger. To the movie's credit, about halfway through, some characters finally start giving this idea some lip service -- the secret agent is turning into a monster, etc.

That would be fine except that the movie doesn't allow much room for things to escalate. It starts off so brutally and violently, both on the part of the killer and on the part of the secret agent, that we don't realize we're supposed to think the secret agent is getting out of control until other characters tell us. To us, he just seems ruthless from the get go, as he ruthlessly attacks suspects who aren't even the killer he's looking for.

The movie is beautifully shot and has some good performances but it is too long and has an overblown musical score that gets in the way of what could have been some more subtle emotional moments. There isn't much that is subtle about this movie, thanks to the over the top violence and gore, so cutting back on the orchestral score might have been a step in the right direction. When stuff on the screen is already extreme, the audience doesn't need to be pounded over the head by the composer.

Early in the film I started to wonder, what's a beautifully shot movie when the subjects being filmed are ugly? What's the point? In cases like these, there damn well better be some kind of message, and I'm not convinced there is one here. Revenge movies are tricky -- you want to identify with the guy getting revenge for the satisfaction, but if the revenge is too brutal, you don't want to identify anymore. On the other hand, if the villain is awful enough, and the filmmakers go out of their way to show you how awful he is, as they do here, then this might help make it easier to stomach the brutal revenge scenes later on.

What this means, though, is that now we, as an audience, have to sit through unpleasantly long, drawn out, meticulously detailed scenes of violence between a sick serial killer and his innocent victims. A little of this would have gone a long way, and you begin to wonder what the point of lingering so much is -- are we supposed to enjoy this first, then enjoy the revenge even more, later? Or would the type of person who enjoys the murder and rape scenes for the visceral thrill even care about the difference in motives between the killer and the secret agent?

In any case, with the inflated running time, I kept thinking, moral ambiguity aside, we could have shaved some time off this movie by not indulging every little tiny moment of violence so much. But then I began to wonder, without all this magnified violence and gore, what would be the point of the movie? I mean, in a sense, isn't the movie about the violence and gore? Taking that stuff out would be like taking the sex scenes out of a porn flick.

So, I don't know. I SAW THE DEVIL was okay, but I think there was a much better movie buried within it. I think the misguided attempts to shock and titillate the audience with ultra violence actually got in the way of this movie being as good as it could have been. When I watch a movie, I want to be in the moment, not thinking, "Why am I watching this?"