I saw the devil 악마를 보았다 [movie]

intense, grotesque, beautiful. a quiet afternoon in with Kim JeeWoon.

Kim JeeWoon and Lee ByungHun had previously worked on three projects together: The good the bad and the weird [2008] a bittersweet life [2005] and the segment memories from three extreems [2002].

Kim JeeWoon is responsible for jump starting my love of korean cinema with tale of two sisters and a bittersweet life (which is in my top 5 favourite films) and i guess without him i may never have developed this unwavering adoration for Lee ByungHun [Iris, jungdok, everybody has secrets, a bittersweet life, bungee jumping of their own, once in a summer, i come with the rain, G.I. Joe, beautiful days, hero, do i need to go on?] as the combination of this director and actor could well be the best thing to ever happen to the world. well, my world.

I really loved memories and the good the bad and the weird. and it really should go without saying by now that a bittersweet life is phenominal. So i was interested in this movie when i saw they had teamed up again late last year.

I dont know why i have only gotten around to watching this now at the end of 2011 but never mind. as expected it was worth the wait. watching i come with the rain and G.I. Joe yesterday reminded me that there was still a Kim JeeWoon - Lee ByungHun film on my hard drive to watch. (i come with the rain was really amazing by the way. ByungHun and Kimura Takuya's second movie together. someone somewhere loves me.)

This movie was going to be hardgoing - I figured that from the blurbs and reviews everywhere saying 'not for the faint hearted' and such. I saw it had been editted a bunch of times for release due to its insanely graphic violence but I just couldn't turn it down. I have to admit i did spend rather a lot of the film wincing away from the screen - and i have a fairly strong stomach for sh*t like that - so yeah i guess i would agree that it is pretty damn violent and gross.

It is about psycho killers and completely insane horrible people so you expect and indeed find a great deal of torture and sexual violence (thankfully the later of which was not particularly graphic) with added cannibalism and god knows what else. yup, it is full of all manner of nasty things that just make you hate humans and their sick ways. But obviously this is not some american slasher gorno flick, there is depth to all the characters and a real progression in the story line.

To outline the plot for you; psychopath (a real one who feels no pain, fear, remorse etc) kidknaps tortures and kills people in his big ass horrible house remeniscent of some hillbilly torture barn in the middle of southern america, complete with guillotine, steak knives, endless supply of sheet plastic, you know the sort.

So this guy is an actual psychopath, not just getting his rocks of to nasty stuff - he is clever, thinks the world owes him everything, really strong and fearless, but above all heartless. This is important, many films' bad guys have been driven insane by some crap sh*t that happened in the past making them flawed and ultimately fragile, but this is a text book psychopath who has no fear of pain or loss. This guy is played by Choi MinSik [oldboy, lady vengence,] who better to convey all this savage disconnection from human emotion than a fantastic actor like him?

Ok, so he is one side of the coin, the other side is a secret agent who is the husband of one of the slaughtered women, played by ByungHun. After the death of his wife, agent SooHyun vows to take revenge and a manhunt outside of the police force begins.

SooHyun plays with his prey like a cat, catching him and torturing him like his own victims, then letting him go to catch up with him again, hounding him at every corner. It becomes sadistic and intense, and as you can imagine it indeed spirals out of control.

ByungHun, as i have said many times before, has the most emotive eyes and you just can't ever help getting drawn into how his characters are feeling. This movie holds no exception to that, you follow SooHyun with the distress and remorse he feels, and understand that there couldn't possibly be any other way to ease his pain than to inflict suffering onto the man who killed his wife, however morally conflicted by that thought you may be.

So the cast is brilliant and this movie is directed by a guy with such a beautiful eye for the perfect shot and the perfect pace that it not only offers the action, blood, and gore that many people may want out of a film like this, but it also delivers the beauty, grace, and heartbreaking emotional presence, found in all Kim JeeWoon movies. Always a bittersweet confliction of the savage and the beautiful.




I wouldn't say this was an easy film to watch by any stretch of the imagination. But i do think it is worth it. Right to the very last stunning soul destroyingly sad scene this movie offers more than just a angry cop tracking a nasty killer and taking matters into his own hands.

It shows the nature of human actions and reactions, laying them out bare like exposed nerves in freezing cold biting air, and the intense twisted reality of heavy grief and remorse, and also the savage consequences of having neither of the those two feelings.

Movie posters:

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A bittersweet life 달콤한 인생 [movie]

Some people just look at home all bloody and stuff y’know?

My first introduction to Lee ByungHun, and waaaaay before I knew who Shin Minah was, this movie came into my life at the very beginning of my interest in Korean cinema. After watching Kim JeeWoon’s A Tale Of Two Sisters and Park ChanWook’s Vengeance Trilogy I sought out a few other south Korean movies (by using amazon.com recommendations of all things – this was epic amounts of years ago when I knew nothing) and bought Kim KiDuk’s The Bow and Samaritan Girl, and Kim JeeWoon’s A Bittersweet Life. It is a film I watch when it has reached the point where I have sort of forgotten exactly what happens again and every time I get about half way through I start to remember how it all erupts and I fall for the movie all over again.

This, like all other Kim JeeWoon films I have seen, stands out from others in the same genre. In this case it is partly due to the actor cast in the main role but mainly due to the quiet, sad, beautiful and lonely feel to a dramatic and violent story.

So, first off, I will explain a little about the greatness that is ByungHun. I would say without hesitation that he is one of my favourite actors, and having just this afternoon watched some other movies of his that I hadn’t seen yet, I was reminded of where I first saw him and thought I should write this one up before I go ahead with the others.

This film does offer all the things you want from Asian gangster type shooty bloody fighty nasties, but ByungHun has a quality that brings unspoken depth and texture that would be sorely missed if his character was merely played as a hard man. This is obviously a necessary part of the role and as ByungHun conveys all this crazy amount of feeling with just a simple glance or exhalation of breath, the combination of him and this character was ideal.

Now, I haven’t watched this since I knew Shin Minah had more tails than you could shake a stick at (don’t shake sticks at a gumiho, she’ll eat your liver) but it makes total sense now when I think about it. I knew I recognised her from somewhere else before gumiho and the devil and whatever else it was that I cant remember off the top of my head, and actually her image came flooding back to me while I wasn’t even watching sweet life, I just suddenly thought - it was her. Bizarre.

Shin Minah is another one with that ambiguous quality – you can see thoughts flying around in that mind of hers and you can see her feelings in her eyes but you just can’t get hold of them - as if she is not really on the same plane of existence as you. In this movie she is beautiful as ever, and fits the part perfectly with a quiet, unexplainable poise and free spirit.

For outlining the plot I want to be careful not to give any spoilers to this review but the film almost feels like it is in four parts and I should not say too much that happens later on if I can help it.

ByunHun plays SunWoo, a guy who works for a powerful underground gang boss called kang, he is a hard man and hotel manager ordered to take care of business above and below ground when needed. Kang requests a personal job from SunWoo, to follow his young girlfriend and take care of the problem if she is cheating on him. Being drawn to the girl’s sweet nature and spirit, when SunWoo finds her with another man he cannot help but let her go, but in doing so he opens up a world of pain for himself and quickly finds himself on the run, tortured, buried alive, and then on a killing spree in order to get to kang to finally settle it all.

Parts of this film are brutal. But it depends how desensitised you are to how you see violence in general anyway. It also depends on how much you look at the context when you watch films like these. I spend most of the time sad when he gets hurt, not wincing in squeamish shock. Again possibly due to ByungHun’s abilities, but regardless, I just don’t see SunWoo as any old brutish hard man.

The fight scenes are awesome, especially when he really goes ape-sh*t in the rain and mud etc. The further into the film you get, the more blood is lost, and the more wretched they all become. The sheer exhaustion felt by SunWoo is contagious and as a viewer you want to find some way out for him somehow.

I really think it is more than just a “relentless action-thriller” comparable to western Scorsese types as it says on the dvd cover, He is not just tough, or bitter, or vengeful in a hard man’s game. He is finding out about human nature, love, and morality (in a gangstery sort of way) while trying to save himself in a completely unforgiving world.

It has that beautiful pace that all Kim JeeWoon movies have, and that lonely feeling that you just can’t shake. It is far more than its blurb makes it out to be. The title is completely fitting though. How can you watch such bloody beatings and still call it a beautiful film? Kim JeeWoon that’s how. I know I am biased because A Tale Of Two Sisters is one of my favourite horror films in the world, but there is a reason for that. I like movies that aren’t just completely all their allocated genre. No matter how savage or testing, if it is still beautiful somehow then it is likely to feel worth the effort in watching. It is why I watch more Korean movies than anything else. That beauty is always present in Kim JeeWoon films, and A Bittersweet Life is possibly the most perfect example.

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