2010’s I Saw The Devil is a revenge horror thriller that sees an NIS agent in Korea seeking revenge against the ruthless killer who murdered his wife. Kim Soo-hyun was a loving husband who works too much. His job requires him to protect others, but the one person he’s unable to protect is his own wife, who is abducted and murdered by the deranged Jang Kyung-chul. With his love killed for no reason and with nothing left but sorrow, Soo-hyun sets his sights on hunting his wife’s killer for brutal vengeance. Unfortunately, achieving his goal requires the NIS agent to walk into the abyss of evil that Kyung-chul thrives on. To kill the devil, he must become the devil himself.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
This harrowing story by filmmaker Kim Jee-woon explores the costs of vengeance. In his journey to hurt the man who hurt him, Soo-hyun detaches himself from all moral sense and righteousness to inflict upon Kyung-chul the pain he feels. I Saw The Devil has everything that a great revenge film needs, but also digs deeper than vengeance to show the viewer the very depths of despair. With that, here is why I Saw The Devil is one of the best revenge movies of all time.
A Sympathetic Hero and a Despicable Villain
Peppermint & Company
When it comes to revenge films, the hero is only as good as the villain. In the film’s opening, we meet NIS agent Kim Soo-hyun played by Lee Byung-hun (GI Joe: Retaliation, The Magnificent Seven), as he talks to his fiancée Jang Joo-yeun over the phone. His issue is that he works too much, but his fiancée loves him anyway. They have a tender moment that immediately endears him to the viewer, but this man we see is snuffed out when Joo-yeun’s body is found in the river. With the unquestioning help from a friend and his would-be father-in-law, Soo-hyun is ready to find Joo-yun’s killer and exact his vengeance. Soo-hyun is a good man—there’s no denying that—but the journey changes him into someone as cold as the man he sets out to find.
That man is Jang Kyung-chul, played by Choi Min-sik (Oldboy, Lady Vengence), an unfeeling and narcissistic psychopath who revels in suffering and his own reputation. There isn’t an ounce of sympathy for him in the entire film. How can there be when he murders and rapes without remorse? As if he couldn’t be more despicable, he kills Joo-yeun after finding out she’s pregnant without a second thought. Despite everything he goes through in this film, he only gives the audience more reason to hate him as time goes on. He’s a good foil for Soo-hyun in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, but the mouse is more cunning than he appears.
The Struggle Between Good and Evil
Photo Credit - Peppermint & Company
Director Kim Jee-woon believes that there is no way for someone to carry out revenge without destroying themselves. That was his aim to show in making this film. Soo-hyun falls deeper into Kyung-chuls abyss as the film progresses. Rather than outright kill the man, Soo-hyun implements a catch-and-release method by torturing his foe and letting him go to track him down and inflict more damage. In this way, he hopes to force Kyung-chul to feel the pain that Joo-yeun felt. The good man we met at the film’s start is masked by a stone-faced killer whose creativity in torture shows the depths to which he’s sinking in order to achieve his satisfaction. There is a symbolic scene where he forces a tracking device down Kyung-chul’s throat. It’s here that he becomes the devil to face the devil. From that point on, the killer is always in Soo-hyun’s ear. He hears Kyung-chul’s words, breathes as he breathes, moves as he moves to hurt him. The man he was before only briefly reemerges in glimpses as he’s hurting Kyung-chul.
Those closest to Soo-hyun try to get him to stop what he is doing, but he refuses, not caring about consequences or any harm to anyone else along the way, although he does his best to save bystanders. His attacks become more brutal and blur the lines between good and evil, and it becomes harder to root for him despite Kyung-chul deserving what is happening. His cat-and-mouse game ultimately becomes an obsession until Kyung-chul eventually pieces together who his attacker is and flips the script on him. The killer removes Soo-hyun’s tracking method and sets out for some vengeance of his own.
The Ultimate Price of Vengeance
In revenge films, there’s typically the point where the target discovers who and why his assailant is after them and acts accordingly to strike back. Kyung-chul doubled down in his resolve and went after the only family Soo-hyun had left. As punishment for helping his would-be son-in-law, Joo-yeun’s father is brutally assaulted, and his remaining daughter is raped and killed. To fully take Soo-hyun’s vengeance from him, Kyung-chul then tries to turn himself in, but his adversary catches him first and takes him back to the very room in which he murdered his fiance to torture him further. Because of Soo-hyuns own mistakes and obsession, Joo-yeun’s remaining family is destroyed.
At the point of begging for his life, the killer refuses to concede to Soo-hyun’s wish for him to feel fear and desperation. We see at this moment that Soo-hyun has become the very monster he set out to destroy as Kyung-chul’s insanity is greater than Soo-hyuns need for vengeance, or so it may seem. Soo-hyun achieves his goal of making the killer feel fear when he rigs the door to his murder room to decapitate him when his family opens the door. The only way to prevent this is for Kyung-chul to keep hold of the rope between his teeth. He dies as Soo-hyun listens. With his mission over, he seems to have a sort of mental breakdown, both crying and laughing in the street as the camera fades out on him completely alone. He got his revenge, but it cost him everything else he had left, including, possibly, his sanity.
The best revenge films aren’t just about vengeance and the satisfaction that comes with it. The best movies show how far the hero will go to right the wrong that was done to them in a way where they feel satisfied. Jee-woon shows us that no absolute vengeance can right the pain of loss. Everyone fantasizes about it, but it’s ultimately futile and takes more than it gives. Realistically, no matter what Soo-hyun did, he was always going to lose himself to kill the devil. There was no real way he could have done it and found peace.
