I Saw the Devil

2010 revenge thriller

Rating: 8/20

Plot: After a serial killer murders his girlfriend, a guy seeks torturous revenge.

You feel every bit of this movies 2 hour and 20 minute running time. I think what I watched on a popular streaming site may have even been abridged because when I looked the movie up on Wikipedia to help clear up something in the plot synopsis, I noticed a sex scene mentioned that I didn't get the chance of enjoying. I can't think of any reason why this movie needs to exist at all, so I surely can't think of any reasons why it would need to exist for 2 hours and 20 minutes.

I have no issues with violence in movies, and sometimes, as sick as it might sound, I even enjoy a bit of it. With the violence in this, you just have to wonder what the point is. Jee-Woon Kim, as a director, seems to take great pleasure in inflicting violence upon his characters, especially women. There's a big difference between the way violence against women is shown compared to most of the violence against the men. The scenes with men are flashy, filled with quick edits and a cartoonish chaos. The male characters, up until the points where they lose their entire heads, dust themselves off and limp off to see another scene, almost like they're in a Warner Brothers cartoon instead of something that is supposed to be taken seriously.

The violence toward women, on the other hand, is shown differently. Kim really seems to enjoy watching the female characters in great distress, the camera lingering on these moments so that we realize they're not just going to be able to dust themselves off again but have to deal with the psychological trauma for the rest of their lives. If they have any more life left, of course. You know how this movie could have been a lot shorter? Less slow scenes where the director seems to be punishing the gender for the sins of girls who didn't return his attention in high school. And that panties shot, Kim? How necessary was that one?

The violence is graphic and the special effects involved in making it appear as if actual human beings are losing body parts or being pummeled or perforated are good enough for Kim to show on the screen for three times longer than they should be shown. There's a nice sense of style with some of these scenes--some lovely stylish shots when a character gets stabby in a taxi, for example--but the stylish slow pans or close-ups of cigarettes being lit or whatever started to wear me down as much as the ultra-violence after a while. At one point, we get to watch a character dig around in his own shit for something, and by the end of this tale of "real revenge, true revenge," it started to feel like I was being asked to do something similar.

Lingering questions: Why does the cannibal guy have such a hot girlfriend? And how did our main serial killer even befriend the cannibalistic serial killer? Aren't they supposed to be loners? Did they meet up after connecting on a message board or something?