I Really saw Three Devils

(B)

Lately, Korean movies have been rather violent.  From hammers, to war, to monsters, and so on and so forth - it seems that the Koreans are frantically trying to catch up to famous American bodycounts.

Unfortunately Kim Ji Woon (The Good, The Bad, and the Weird)’s I Saw the Devil isn’t any different, in fact not even the title is accurate.

So here’s special agent Soo Hyun (Lee Byung Hun) trying to exact revenge after Gyung-Chul (Choi Min Shik) murders Soo Hyun’s fiancee, Joo Yeon (Oh San Ha).  Needlessly to say, that revenge stories has been told before (thanks to Park Chan Wook), Lee and Choi being portrayed as good and bad respectively.  Throughout the movie however, Kim lets the audience wonder, “Who is exactly the devil?”

This reviewer is not going to spend paragraphs trying to answer that question, and it’s not the point, either.  But what is important is how Kim flirts with the idea.  If Kim wanted the audience to think that Choi is the devil, then he has done extremely well, even if Choi has plenty of experience playing a madman before.  But if Kim wanted the audience to believe the secret agent was the devil, then that’s where the flaws really begin.  In all the times Lee has cried during the movie, the only meaningful crying scene is his first, when he finds out that his fiancee has died in Choi’s hands.  During the rest of the times he’s cried, he seems like more of a crybaby.  Not to mention that when he’s not crying, his insanity is rather boring, masquerading well-choreographed action scenes as evil.

And yet, there are other elements about I Saw the Devil that was unsatisfying. Most unfortunately, this movie falls victim to the Korean movie template.  The quirky (although good) cinematography, the annoying John Williams-esque soundtrack, blood that’s brighter than a Ferrari - all culminating to a 2 hour, 24-minute math equation.  Additionally, the editing is sudden and awkward, almost as if Kim expects us to know what’s going to happen so that he can hurry on rather than going on to the next scene.  The editing isn’t like that for all the scenes, but when that does happen, all the suspense is taken away and all we see instead is the next scene, Lee fixated at his GPS device.

To conclude this movie, this movie’s not going to satisfy everybody, and it’s definitely not going to replace movies like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but it’s worth adding to the Netflix Instant Queue.

-30-

Edward Kang

11 September 2011