A beautiful, young Korean woman has car trouble on a deserted road at night. A car stops, the driver offers to help then breaks through the window, bludgeons her with a hammer, takes her to his filthy room, tortures her. "I'm pregnant. Please don't kill me." she manages to gasp. The middle-aged maniac looks puzzled for a second, then asks, "Why not?" The police find her dismembered body in a creek. Her husband is a detective on the police force and gets two weeks leave, during which he captures the killer two or three time, beats him half to death, severs his Achilles tendon, and commits other unpleasantries.
So far, in abstract, so lousy. I dislike slasher movies generally, especially those that are handled as if murder were a joke, and I hate the emerging genre of torture porn. It wasn't THAT long ago that "Dirty Harry" shot a suspect in the leg in the middle of Kezar Stadium and then stepped on the wound in order to squeeze out the location of a young girl the suspect had buried alive. That was nothing compared to this.
Yet, dare I say it? Despite the bathtubs of blood, the screams of horror, the terrible poundings, this is pretty deftly done. It avoids the usual clichés of horror and suspense. When a glass crashes and there is a loud sting on the sound track and it's just the cat, or when a hand reaches out for someone's shoulder and she jumps in fright and there is a WHAM on the sound track, or when a helpless woman takes a flashlight and investigates some curious noises in a dark and dangerous place -- well, none of that is to be found in "I've Seen the Devil." Nor does this young, handsome Korean Dirty Harry (Byung-hun Lee) come away from his plan with any taste of victory. His extra-legal pursuit and torture of the maniac has led to the murder of his wife's family. He'll be fired, taken to court, and he's accomplished nothing that could not have been accomplished with much less bloodshed and tears. Aside from the initial discovery of his wife's body, the only time he shows any emotion is in the last shot when, standing alone in the middle of a road, he breaks into searing and cathartic sobs.
I think I'll give this one a pass, even though I loathe seeing people suffer. It's well acted, for one thing. The serial murder (Min-sik Choy) has the juiciest part and handles it with some originality. With the exception of one or two scenes, the hero is wooden in comparison. It's also neatly directed -- nothing fancy, just some scenes that make you realize the director knows what he's about.
So far, in abstract, so lousy. I dislike slasher movies generally, especially those that are handled as if murder were a joke, and I hate the emerging genre of torture porn. It wasn't THAT long ago that "Dirty Harry" shot a suspect in the leg in the middle of Kezar Stadium and then stepped on the wound in order to squeeze out the location of a young girl the suspect had buried alive. That was nothing compared to this.
Yet, dare I say it? Despite the bathtubs of blood, the screams of horror, the terrible poundings, this is pretty deftly done. It avoids the usual clichés of horror and suspense. When a glass crashes and there is a loud sting on the sound track and it's just the cat, or when a hand reaches out for someone's shoulder and she jumps in fright and there is a WHAM on the sound track, or when a helpless woman takes a flashlight and investigates some curious noises in a dark and dangerous place -- well, none of that is to be found in "I've Seen the Devil." Nor does this young, handsome Korean Dirty Harry (Byung-hun Lee) come away from his plan with any taste of victory. His extra-legal pursuit and torture of the maniac has led to the murder of his wife's family. He'll be fired, taken to court, and he's accomplished nothing that could not have been accomplished with much less bloodshed and tears. Aside from the initial discovery of his wife's body, the only time he shows any emotion is in the last shot when, standing alone in the middle of a road, he breaks into searing and cathartic sobs.
I think I'll give this one a pass, even though I loathe seeing people suffer. It's well acted, for one thing. The serial murder (Min-sik Choy) has the juiciest part and handles it with some originality. With the exception of one or two scenes, the hero is wooden in comparison. It's also neatly directed -- nothing fancy, just some scenes that make you realize the director knows what he's about.