Review of I Saw the Devil (2010) by Rajansatish P — 04 Sep 2011

I adored this. An insanely gory, wonderfully intense and utterly gorgeous crime thriller (the cinematography is excellent).

The story is simply amazing - a special agent going after the serial killer who killed hi fiancee, but toying with him and causing him as much pain as possible over a prolonged period, rather than just killing him straight off. As we progress our hero begins to slip ever more into becoming a monster himself, as he blurs the moral lines, and our serial killer cottons onto to how he is being tracked and decides not to go down without a fight.

Byung-hun Lee and Min-sik Choi are two of Korea's best actors, and they both deliver riveting performances here. I was on our special agent's side whole-heartedly throughout, right down to him breaking down into tears once he's finally killed the serial killer (I never cry, but I felt the heavy emotional impact of that).

One thing that did confuse me for a little while was the nature of the two men Choi kills in the cab - I thought they were secret agent friends of our protagonist's initially (thinking it too coincidental that he would get picked up by more killers), but they quickly realised who they were. The film did suffer from having too many serial killers in one film a tad - with the cannibal guy and his wife too - but it just made for more welcome insane havoc.

The action was brilliant (it's great having a highly trained hero who's trying to get revenge for once), the nature of the crimes and the realistic quality of the gore and effects rather disturbing, and everything from the pacing down to the dialogue was just perfection.

The hues and lighting of the cinematography was incredibly gorgeous and the way it was shot just excellent - e.g. when the camera kept circling around the car in one continuous shot when our antagonist was stabbing to death those other two serial killers.

I was rapt with attention throughout what I think is a true modern masterpiece by Ji-woon Kim. An incredibly cool film that I plan to watch many times over.