If slasher movies in the U.S. were this well made, I'd go to the theater every once in a while. But they're not. He're a Korean slasher film that's beautifully shot, well directed and has solid acting. In no way is I Saw the Devil on the same level as Memories of Murder, nor does it need to be. It's a fun watch that could use some tightening up, but it is a very solid and entertaining film. My major complaint is that Choi Min-sik's character loses his creepiness as the film progresses and if a serial killer doesn't have the Vengeance is Mine factor, I get bored real quick. Another complaint is that the protégé character did nothing for the film and should have been cut (pardon the pun). More psychology and less gratuitous gore, I suppose. A worthy download though. A worthy download. Enjoy.
A note from Team Dishwasher:
This film is AVCHD, which is a format that we've never posted. Don't let it freak you out. You can still play this in MPC or VLC media players, but you can also burn this onto standard dual-layer DVD media and play it in a Blu-Ray player that is compatible with the AVCHD format. 1080p on inexpensive media. Pretty cool, huh? We'll be posting more of this format in the future, so we wanted to give a heads-up. Here's a wiki on AVCHD if you want to read more on the subject.
From Scott Tobias at A.V. Club:
The idea that revenge corrodes the soul of the avenger is an old theme in vigilante movies, perhaps because it’s the only moral route down an exceedingly dark path; otherwise, retribution and lawlessness rule the day. Korean director Park Chan-wook explored this theme thoroughly in a trilogy bookended by 2002’s Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and 2005’s Lady Vengeance, and epitomized by the 2003 cult smash Oldboy, a mega-revenge tale set to an operatic pitch. Enter Park’s countryman Kim Ji-woon, a gifted genre alchemist who fused J-horror style with florid melodrama in 2003’s A Tale Of Two Sisters and Eastern-ized the spaghetti Western with 2008’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Not to be outdone, Kim goes to ever-nastier extremes with I Saw The Devil, but he also extends the revenge theme into a mesmerizing study of the nature of evil itself.
Executed in high style, with a narrative coherence that sometimes eludes Park, I Saw The Devil opens with serial killer Choi Min-sik (star of Oldboy) claiming his latest victim, a female driver caught with a flat in a snowstorm. Turns out the woman’s fiancé, played by Lee Byung-hun, is an ass-kicking special agent who receives the news stoically, then sets about finding the perpetrator and making sure he pays dearly for the crime. Using a high-tech GPS capsule that makes him constantly aware of Choi’s location, Lee seeks to torment before he kills, hoping to make Choi feel the same fear and pain he inflicted on Lee’s wife-to-be. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game that twists and turns and escalates in tension as it unfolds.
It should come as no surprise that Lee’s spectacular quest for revenge comes back to haunt him, but I Saw The Devil is less about that than about the immutability of evil, which can’t be transformed or obliterated, but simply exists, cold and black, as a force of absolute destruction. Lee looks into the abyss and the abyss looks back at him, with a twinkle in its eye. Though Kim’s penchant for black comedy makes it more palatable, I Saw The Devil is still a nasty piece of work, extreme even by the hair-raising standards of extreme Asian cinema. But for stout-hearted genre aficionados—“sickos,” if you will—it’s essential viewing.
Technical Information:
Title: 악마를 보았다/Akmareul boattda/I saw the Devil
Year: 2010
Country: South Korea
Director: Kim Ji-woon
Source: Retail BluRay
Video Codec/Format: AVCHD
Container: .M2TS
Size: 7.69 GB
Length: 02:22:11
Programs used:
Resolution: 1920x1080
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Video: MPEG4 AVC H264 @ 4398 kb/s
Frame Rate: 23.976 fps
Audio 1: Korean- Dolby DTS 5.1 @ 1510 kb/s
Audio 2: English- Dolby DTS 5.1 @ 1510 kb/s
Subtitles: English, Spanish
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악마를 보았다 Megaupload Links