Continuing in a wave of ultra-violent revenge films from South Korea, - crystallised in Chan-wook Park's excellent Vengeance Trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)) - I Saw the Devil takes the genre into brutal, kinetic, and near-to-the-knuckle gornography. Oldboy's Min-sik Choi plays a serial killer, Kyung-chul, who kills Joo-yeon (San-ha Oh) in her car in the opening of the film. She is the girlfriend of secret agent Kim Soo-hyeon (Byung-hun Lee), who then embarks on a no-holds-barred mission to find and kill the man who killed her.
It's your standard revenge film, filled with over the top grand guignol-like moments of gore, as heads are particularly targeted for tense battering, aided by the frenzied camera. But what makes these moments far more ferocious is the fact that between these contained flourishes of violence are connected with the more serene, delicate moments - it can become jarring. However, the use of this technique is an easy trick, and this is the issue with most films by Jee-woon Kim. Kim has that post-MTV generation paradox, - with its influence of short cuts fast camera movements, and stylisation - the content is largely left behind in favour of style. Since the 1980's, a film's look has often been more important than a message, or at least string narrative cinema.
The fact that Kim, and writer Hoon-jung Park have imbued the film with it's knowledge of the serial killer movie into the revenge film is a nice touch, but it is still thematically no different than any other revenge film. In bold strokes, I Saw the Devil, simplistically relates to the themes of the duality of mankind, as the agent digs deeper into an encompassing psychology of hatred, effecting all around him. To catch the killer, Kim Soo-hyeon has to become the killer, bringing him to the same level of depravity. It's a very stylish film, and the filmic touches are often stunning. However, with a rather long running time for this type of film, it does become increasingly nasty, and the beating, stabbings, and torture almost become the entire film, missing an opportunity to explore in an interesting and complex duality of the lead killer/agent.
No comments:
Post a Comment