Damn,what a ride! This film is as visually shocking as it is psychologically disturbing, attacking the immunity to violence that has become widespread in today's film audience by purposefully giving Soo-hyeon Kim (Byung-hun Lee), and the viewers, more than than can be handled rationally. A mix between a revenge flick and torture picture, I Saw the Devil is another example of South Korea pushing the limits of morality. Following the brutal murder of his fiancée, secret service-like agent Kim takes time off from work and sets to find her killer on his own, vowing to make him feel 10,000 times the pain he made her go through. His chosen method consists of beating him up and torturing him to the loss of consciousness and then letting him go; only to catch him again later (with an implanted tracking device) to repeat the entire process before letting him go again. All is well (relatively speaking) until the tables turn and Kim loses the upper-hand, realizing that playing with your prey only serves to make it mad.
Typical of South Korean cinema, the violence in Devil is brutal and abundant. Presented through elaborate hand-to-hand fighting sequences mixed-in with slow graphic torture scenes, it is essential to the film's contention that one must become inhuman to fight inhumane behavior. The film's protagonist, while perhaps the picture's most violent character action-wise, never finds joy or satisfaction in his practice of violence; unlike the killer and his known associates. His raging violent streak seems more like a duty he feels he must take care of as an obligation to rid the world of these monsters; all while being careful of not turning into a monster himself.
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