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I Saw the Devil
Score: 91%
Rating: Not Rated
Publisher: Magnolia Home Entertainment
Region: 1
Media: Blu-ray/1
Running Time: 142 Mins.
Genre: Horror/Foreign
Audio: English, Korean 5.1 DTS HD
           Master Audio

Subtitles: English, Korean SDH, Spanish

Features:
  • Deleted Scenes
  • Raw and Rough: Behind the Scenes of I Saw the Devil

What would you do to get revenge on the man that killed your fiancée? Would you turn from a normal man who sings to his girl into a cold-blooded killer? In I Saw the Devil, Ju-Yeon (San-ha Oh) breaks down on the side of the road with a flat tire. She's on the phone with her fiancée, Soo-Hyun (Byung-hun Lee), when a mysterious man says he'll look at it for her because in the snow, it might take a while to wait on the tow truck. He's in a taxi bus that says campus security, so you'd think that it would be safe. Of course, that stranger attacks Ju-Yeon before the tow truck gets there and drags off her badly beaten body. When she is begging for her life, we find out that she is pregnant, but that does no good as he chops her up anyway. After a kid finds an ear, a search begins and they start finding pieces. Her fiancée, Soo-Hyun, is really upset. He is given two weeks off by his boss. Given his job, he's got access to some cool gadgets. He's is in some kind of special forces or secret services, I don't think they ever tell which, but either way it makes him a very dangerous man!

Of course, Soo-Hyun is going to be going on a personal vendetta manhunt for the man who killed his fiancée. He starts with a suspect in other murders, but even though he confesses to those (after a wrench to the balls), he doesn't confess to Ju-Yeon's murder. Soo-Hyun is a man on a mission and he's a true badass with no conscience at this point! While Ju-Yeon is looking for the killer, he kidnaps and kills another young woman. Given that Soo-Hyun has access to criminal profiles because Ju-Yeon's father is the police chief, Soo-Yeon keeps going down the list and finds a man named Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi) (who is the killer, but Soo-Hyun doesn't know for sure yet). When he finds his fiancée's ring in a gutter at Kyung-chul's residence in a grate behind a hidden door, he knows he's got the right man, but now he has to find him. Thanks to those cool gadgets that I mentioned earlier, Soo-Hyun will find his man, and that's when the fun really begins! Soo-Hyun decides to play cat and mouse with Kyung-chul. Seems to me like less people would have died and less women would have been terrorized if he'd just have killed Kyung when he caught him, but what fun would that be? He wants to make sure that Kyung knows what it is like to be hunted and tortured for sport.

Apparently there is more than one cannibal in the area since Kyung finds a couple to try and hide with. Soo-Hyun isn't going back down though. He's going to make them all suffer like their victims did. He's really amazing, and moves like a superhero when he needs to. He's also the world's best stunt driver as you'll see nearer to the end. Kyung plays cat for a bit too long though and loses control of the situation when his mouse gets away. He's going to have to figure out how to regain control of the situation quickly, but I'm pretty sure that his mind is gone by then anyway.

I Saw the Devil is a very brutal and bloody movie, but there is a point to the violence. I love the dichotomy between the man who sings to his love in the beginning and the man who becomes the hunter after her death. The pure rage he suffers puts him in a place where he can become a hunter and killer that shows no emotions whatsoever until the job is done.

If you want to watch I Saw the Devil in English instead of the original Korean, the voices are pretty good. I like the voice acting for Soo-Hyun better than Kyung-chul. I did notice that the subtitles and the voice dubs don't match up in some places at all and are slightly different in others. I'm guessing they tried to make the lips match more when it didn't really matter what order the lines were in. Personally, I prefer not to watch the dubbed version, but it is nice to have it there in case that's your preference. There are also quite a lot of deleted scenes including one very graphic sex scene. There is also a Behind the Scenes that I really thought added a lot of interesting information about how it was made. The Behind the Scenes is in Korean and subtitled. Given that this is Blu-ray, I was hoping for even more special features, but the Behind the Scenes was quite long. I was also impressed with the quality of the sound. I do love how well DTS HD sounds especially when it makes you feel like you're in the movie!

If you're looking for a really good psychological horror where the bad guy is the one tormented or if you're looking for a very violent movie, I highly recommend you check out I Saw the Devil. Like a lot of Asian horrors, it doesn't spell out every little thing for you so you might have to think a bit, but the story is well done and the acting is great. Any horror fan should check it out today, as long as you can stomach the violence and blood. Personally I loved it!



-Cyn, GameVortex Communications
AKA Sara Earl
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