I Saw the Devil [Blu-ray] by Magnolia Home Entertainment

Actors

• Lee Byung-hun
• Choi Min-Sik

Format

• Dubbed
• Subtitled
• Widescreen

Editorial Review

Korean director Kim Ji-woon first garnered a reputation as an ace assimilator of outside styles, most notably for the ickily Freudian J-horror thriller A Tale of Two Sisters and the monumentally goofy spaghetti Western pastiche The Good, the Bad, the Weird. I Saw the Devil finds the filmmaker moving towards a style much closer to home–namely the Korean revenge thriller, best typified by movies such as Oldboy, Memories of Murder, and Nowhere to Hide–with results that vary between masterfully staged and punishingly gross. Beginning with an impeccably uneasy snowbound abduction scene, the story follows a dashing secret agent (Byung-hun Lee) sworn to track down the murderer of his pregnant fiancée. Upon finding the maniac (Oldboy's majestically disheveled Min-sik Choi), he implants him with a tracking device and proceeds to follow him across the country, swooping in to torture him at random intervals. Clocking in at 144 minutes, Ji-woon's film clearly believes in a more-is-more policy, with ideas about the futility of revenge and the dangers of staring into the abyss taken to their graphic extremes. Viewers with strong constitutions will find much to chew on. Anyone else, however, should be prepared to dive behind the couch at a moment's notice. —Andrew Wright