Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up!
Wow, that felt like a weirdly enthusiastic way to start an entry for both a pretty grim movie as well as the third and final part in what has accidentally become a fun Bleak Week cycle here.
For anyone somehow just checking in, this is my year spanning project to keep myself writing and expanding my cinematic horizons with 52 movies I've never seen before. Some on my to do list, some tagged in by my wife who has been a good sport in this endeavor.
With this entry, I'm coming to the end of what has inadvertently become a fun, strange mini-cycle in this project. By sheer happy accident, the past few movies turned into a trifecta built around the art house theater custom known as Bleak Week, a week in which indie cinemas specialize in varying incredibly dark movies. That the week itself – sandwiched between this week's movie and Incendies – went to Sex and the City, wound up being amusing to me. That even before the writeup turned into a meditation on the movie as a snapshot of the last hurrah before the financial bubble burst.
So where do we go after war crimes and financial collapse? How about blood-soaked vengeance that no one walks away from happily?
To those of you who said 'Yes'? Good, cause we're going there anyway.
With that as our set-up (and I suppose VERY vague spoiler), let's get into the pitch.
Kim Jee-Woon's I Saw the Devil introduces us to two men: serial killer Jang Kyung-Chul (Choi Min-Sik, returning to the revenge genre from his earlier iconic work in Oldboy) and intelligence agent Kim Soo-Hyun (Lee Byung-Hun.) The movie starts as Kyung-Chul has killed his latest victim – Soo-Hyun's fiancée. Soo-Hyun, determined to avenge her death, first starts by wreaking terror on multiple suspects before finding Kyung-Chul. With his target located, Soo-Hyun isn't interested in bringing Kyung-Chul in alive, but rather has decided he will make the man suffer as he has. What follows is a violent, cold-blooded game of cat and mouse between the two men, first as we see how far from the path of law and order Soo-Hyun will stray in his desire for revenge, and then what Kyung-Chul is will to do to return to favor.
Again, gotta love how this trio sorted out. Right down to ending with the grimmest of the three.
And honestly? I really liked that it went that way.
I know, I know, it feels weird to apply 'liked' to a movie that is a fairly brutal, violent entry into the 'vengeance as a double-edged sword' subgenre. I swear, this isn't out of some weird sadism at the violent acts committed – in fact, there were a few times I was actually surprised to see the movie not pull a punch. In this case it came down to two things. The first – this is just a genuinely well-made, tense thriller further enhanced by two top notch performers in Min-Sik and Byung-Hun. The second is how hard this goes into that double-edged aspect of the vengeance.
Lee Byung-Hun being the dark comedy No Other Choice,
this gives me a whole other level of respect for his range.
It's not a universally set rule, but it's not an uncommon occurrence in these kinds of stories where that sort of blow back comes in the idea of the protagonist simply resorting to more monstrous means than those they are against to settle the score. It's even present in this to a degree, particularly early on as it becomes clear that Soo-Hyun isn't satisfied with simply seeing his fiancée's killer arrested or killed. Where this movie steps it up for me comes with the fact that the movie remembers the man Soo-Hyun is pursuing to this degree is still a violent, dangerous psychopath. Once Kyang-Chul starts to key in to what's happening, he starts pushing back. Instead of this simply being one man going too hard to destroy another, it becomes murderous one-upping. What started as Soo-Hyun determined to torture the source of his misery to death turns into him realizing he let a monster live too long, and realizing he can still lose more at this man's hands, turning into a race to see which man can destroy the other first.
It is bleak. It is cold-blooded. It is mean-spirited. And dammit, it worked on me.
It still feels genuinely weird to say that incredibly bleak tone is what I enjoyed about this movie, but there's no other way to put. There is just something about the grim balance that this movie hits that really resonated for me and I'm glad I finally got to watching it.
I'm also glad this was the movie of the three to close out this accidental Bleak Week cycle, going out on the darkest, and most final of the three movies.
So, for anyone who's been reading these and going 'Jesus Christ, could you lighten up a little?' lately – I've got good news!
Sort of. Depending your tastes.
There will be a tonal palate cleanser on deck next time as I make my penultimate foray into Open Waters. Next entry, I'm coming near the end with (to date, fingers crossed) John Waters's final directorial outing, 2004's A Dirty Shame.
Till next time!
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