By Rosario Brenda Gonzalez
I Saw the Devil. How can you miss this movie with the venerable Choi Min-sik and the versatile Lee Byung-hun? Both perform their roles to heights of artistry making for the unlikely plot of what is basically a revenge film. But even if the opportunity and reality of killing the one who wronged you presents itself, this movie’s anti-hero/hero refuses to deal him with the ultimate punishment. He instead keeps him alive until their next encounter, when he can exact graver forms of vengeance.
Choi Min-sik plays Jang Kyung-chul, a serial killer who crossed the path of Kim Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun), agent of the National Intelligence Service (NIS). Kyung-chul did terrible things to Soo-hyun’s fiancée setting the tone of violence and brutality to this critically and commercially acclaimed film. Instead of killing the psychopath, Soo-hyun, the film’s protagonist, would only inflict some pain on him then set him free. They would engage in another cat-and-mouse chase until the same scenario was repeated. The climax shows revenge not being equal to a sense of justice but to depths of despair.
The monster that brought havoc to Soo-hyun’s life seems to relish all that punishment in the meantime that the latter is getting to be more and more like the devil he so detests. And here lies the significance of Director Kim Jee-woon’s masterpiece of a movie. Revenge comes with consequences, sometimes strange, as in the one seeking justice becoming more devilish than the devil himself.
In a country ruled by diabolical means it is not enough to banish evil with similar satanic ways. Or of starting out saintly and ending up demonic. But Kim, maker of other acclaimed films such as A Tale of Two Sisters, The Good, the Bad, the Weird and The Age of Shadows, is hardly a preacher that pontificates. He once said, “The devils in real life were more cruel, violent and psychotic than in cinema”. #
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Rosario Brenda Gonzalez is a long-time development worker who discovered South Korean films and television series during the pandemic. She was encouraged to review 18 South Korean movies, 2 South Korean television series, and 1 Japanese television series upon realizing that many of these tackled social issues in an informative and entertaining manner.
A BA Journalism graduate of UP Diliman, Ms. Gonzalez has been a project evaluator and development management trainer for more than three decades. Prior to that, she was a human rights and church worker.
