Finally caught up with these two Korean movies from my watch list. Both are on the recommended list of many of the movie critics. Do they fall under mainstream or cult, I am not sure. I am not a big fan of slotting a movie into arty, cult, or mainstream. I go by, did the movie work for me or not. Did the director succeed on what he or she sets out to do? Did it hold the interest? Anything fresh and creative in the making and storytelling? No lazy writing? I consider the movie above average if there are 10-15 scenes that worked even as a whole the movie could be a letdown and could have been better.
Oldboy and I Saw the Devil have a common underlying theme, how far you will go to take revenge? Both take it to heart the saying Revenge is a dish best served cold. Protagonists don’t believe in a swift punishment, the police, or the judiciary 😀 Both the movies keep the focus on two main characters. Of course, supporting actors do a good job but they don’t get enough screen time for their character arc. Violent content is another similarity between the two. There are good number of body part chopping scenes, more detailed and close-up shots than what we have signed up for. I felt the violent content fit the narrative arc in Oldboy. Even though it was not an easy watch, but we can connect with the Octopus eating scene in Oldboy, it could be either what will make a person feel alive after being fed the same food for 15 years or the anger of not knowing why he was kept in captivity for those many years. In I Saw the Devil, I get why the narration needs the violence, but after few scenes it becomes repetitive and ends up in sadism zone.
Korean movies push the envelope when it comes to not just violent content but even with the stories. Hollywood or our local *woods (Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu) don’t think will venture into the key plot conflict of Oldboy which is a social taboo. Iratta, the Malayalam movie, did have a similar climactic twist but you feel the impact more in Oldboy. Not to be misread, twist was hard to digest in Iratta too but what I am trying to get to is how Oldboy makes it a crucial reason for the revenge and the revenge dish served is another social taboo. If you are a person with light stomach, be warned these movies are not for you 🤢
Oldboy: Be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they sink as the same
Dae-su Oh gets kidnapped and is imprisoned for fifteen years. In a windowless hotel room. He doesn’t know why. He gets sedated to avert suicide. There is only a color TV to keep him company. Suddenly one fine day after 15 years he gets released. Again, he doesn’t know why. Then he is told he has five days to figure out the reason. What I described so far gets done within first 15-20mts with montage style shots. Rest of the movie is the journey of Oh Dae-su trying to piece together the puzzle. Director Chan-wook Park doesn’t rush through Dae-su’s detective journey. He takes the required time not only for Dae-su but even for us to put together the pieces. As the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle fall into place we hit the intense, gruesome, painful meltdown between Dae-su Oh, the prisoner, and Woo-jin Lee, the captor. Premise is far-fetched but once you accept the premise, what you get is a wonderful journey into the complex psyche of two people. Echo shots are used effectively. Experience Woo-jin went through and what Woo-jin made Dae-su to go through are the mirror images. In the final showdown it is as if they are staring at the mirror except one feels the pain of loss and the other the horror of the act. As Woo-jin says could Dae-su have avoided the predicament he is in by asking the right question, why he was let free after 15 years than the one he struggled with, why he was kidnapped and kept in captivity? A brilliant performance from Min-sik Choi as Dae-su Oh. Ji-tae Yoo as Woo-jin does an excellent job too but Min-sik Choi steals the show. Special callout to Kang Hi-jeong who plays the Mi-do character. A well-made film if you are fine with the content and take it as a work of art.
I Saw the Devil: Hey. Cut the bullshit. You already lost. You think you got me? Huh? I don’t know what pain is. Fear? Don’t know that either. There’s nothing you can get from me. So, you already lost. Got that?
How do you take revenge on a devil? A devil that doesn’t know fear or pain. In I Saw the Devil, Soo-hyeon Kim’s life is changed overnight when his wife gets murdered by a serial killer. Soo-hyeon is a trained secret agent. With uncontrollable anger and obsessed with taking revenge, he goes down the list of potential killers. He hunts down Kyung-chul Jang, the real killer of his wife. Rather than arresting or killing him, he beats him up brutally and let him live with a tracker in his body. Soo-hyeon plan is to torture Kyung-chul till he feels the pain and fear his victims went through, kill him when he is in the most pain shivering out of fear. That will be the real complete revenge, he thinks. Putting ourselves in his shoes his thought process is understandable. Except that he underestimates the opponent. Kyung-chul, is a devil incarnate. An irrational, violent, and wild game of cat and mouse ensues. As the hunt progresses, killer gets one step ahead of the agent. Body count goes up. It leads to the inevitable ghastly climax. Did the agent exact his revenge, or he has turned into another monster? Director Jee-won Kim spends little time on character building but focus more on showing us shocking torture scenes. One can argue how else to show the devil, but beyond a point it gets into meaningless torture zone. Varieties of weaponry gets used, knives, scalpel, sickle, hammer, borer, and a guillotine. Both the guys use these weapons blurring the line between the good and the bad. If you thought Octopus scene from Oldboy is too much wait till you see what the killer’s brother eats for dinner in this movie 🤢 Discounting the sadism, which is hard I agree, movie is skillfully made (I know, not easy to say this? 🤔). Sprinkled dark humor works. Hilarious one is where two killers scouting for their next victim end up picking up the devil himself, poetic justice isn’t it 😀 Badlapur by Sriram Raghavan and Asuravatham by Maruthupandian ventured into this domain, where a hero becomes a monster to take revenge. Badlapur made it more intriguing with good and bad switching places. Both Badlapur and Asuravatham (these came after I Saw the Devil) did it without becoming a torture porn. Like Oldboy, Min-sik Choi steals the show as the devil. Byung-hun Lee as the agent has given an excellent performance too. Watch it if you are the kind of person who analyzes the movie as artwork, compare and contrast movies, which approach works, and which doesn’t.