Princess Buttercup Beholds The Savage Vengeance Of I SAW THE DEVIL At TIFF!!

Merrick here...
Princess Buttercup got a look at Kim Ji-woon (aka Ji-woon Kim)'s I SAW THE DEVIL at TIFF. To avoid any potential confusion, this has nothing to do with DEVIL ('from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan'). That's about a buncha people stuck in an elevator where bad things happen. This is something entirely different.
Looks intense as hell. Is it? Here's Princess Buttercup to tell us...

Not sure if this would be of interest, but I was at I Saw the Devil last night and was blown away. The new Kim Ji-woon film, it's recently been released in Korea after some footage was cut (I believe the Korean ratings board deemed it offensive to human dignity) but they showed the full version at TIFF and Magnet Releasing has picked up U.S. distribution. It's a vengeance film starring Choi Min-sik (Oldboy) and Lee Byung-hun (The Good, The Bad and The Weird). Lee Byung-hun is a man whose fiancee is brutally murdered by Choi Min-sik and basically, the film revolves around Lee Byung-hun's quest to inflict pain on Choi Min-sik. But unlike most other vengeance films, I Saw the Devil overtly raises the question of morality. Often with vengeance films, the bad guy is obviously bad and we can root for the avenger with a clear conscience, or even if the avenger seems to be crossing the line, the film itself doesn't explicitly address the question of whether what he's doing makes him as bad as the person he's after. I Saw the Devil has several scenes which question the path that Lee Byung-hun has taken and by the end, I wasn't sure who was the true villain of the film. This is probably my favourite thing about the movie because I think that at heart, a vengeance film should raise a question of morality and I Saw the Devil pretty much throws that question in your face. Lee Byung-hun is great and because the movie makes his day job to be some type of secret service agent, we get some surprisingly awesome action sequences. Watching Choi Min-sik is fascinating since he's essentially playing the reverse of his Oldboy character. In I Saw the Devil, he's a complete psychopath; smart and seriously messed up. Sometimes I almost felt like Oh Dae-su from Oldboy was really mad about what happened to him, flipped out, then became Kyung-chul in this film. A lot has been made about how graphic the violence is but in the context of the film, it does make sense considering the characters and situations. I'm not normally squeamish, but I turned away in this movie several times. There's one moment near the beginning when they're searching for the fiancee in a river which scared the crap out of me. It's not a movie someone should watch without being aware of what might be coming. Kim Ji-woon mentioned in the intro that some people think it's too violent while others are disappointed because it's not as violent as it's hyped up to be. Basically, it's there, it's inescapable and it's fairly relentless. When I got home to my empty, dark apartment after the film, I suddenly got spooked and I don't think I've ever been scared by a non-supernatural villain (honestly, it's a day later and I'm still kind of creeped out). I think it's because despite the high level of violence in the film, I felt like there was a certain level of reality because it was a bit jarring to be reminded that this type of random violence could actually happen to anyone. Your car could break down in the wrong place, or you could even just open a door to the wrong person. There are a lot of random victims in the film. The cat and mouse game between Choi Min-sik and Lee Byung-hun is also fantastic. It's truly back-and-forth between them for the entire film. I don't think I can watch I Saw the Devil again but it's the best vengeance movie I've ever seen. I love Park Chan-Wook's trilogy but always felt that there was a little something missing from each of the films whereas I Saw the Devil feels complete to me. There are even some funny moments. And in some way, this film reminds me of Silence of the Lambs (it's that good), but more visceral. This was the one film I was dying to see during TIFF and even though going in I was convinced this had to be awesome just based on the people involved, I could never have imagined it was going to be this (pulse-pounding, ultra-tense, punch to the face) intense. Really recommended. Princess Buttercup...off to double-check the locks...