{"id":10898,"date":"2011-01-25T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=10898"},"modified":"2016-09-16T10:38:10","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T17:38:10","slug":"sundance-review-i-saw-devil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/sundance-review-i-saw-devil\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance Review: \u2018I Saw the Devil\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can a movie be too violent? For my personal taste, I would say yes. At 141 minutes, ‘I Saw the Devil’ is almost non-stop violence. This isn’t violence where the camera turns away and your brain does the guesswork. This is full-on, no-holds-barred, How-did-they-film-that-without-actually-killing-anyone?<\/em> type of violence. That brings me to my next question: If the only thing separating a movie from the rest of its genre is the audacity in showing so much violence, does that make it a good movie?<\/p>\n

<\/h6>\n
I Saw the Devil<\/a><\/h5>\n

Directed by Kim Jee-woon
\nStarring: Lee Byung-hun and Choi Min-sik<\/p>\n

I wrestled with whether or not I liked ‘I Saw the Devil’. It’s a revenge story from Korea. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and has played at Fantastic Fest. A man loses his wife to a serial killer. Coincidentally, that man is also a government law enforcement agent. Now he’s on a quest to find his wife’s killer and make the man suffer.<\/p>\n

From that point onward, ‘I Saw the Devil’ is an unrelenting blood-soaked ride into the deepest depravities of mankind. There is some sick, twisted stuff going on with these bad guys. Really sick and really twisted.<\/p>\n

Some people dig movies that are filled to the brim with skull-crushing action, but ‘I Saw the Devil’ made me feel like I was watching the Korean version of ‘Saw<\/a>‘ \u2013 without any of the cute, pseudo-clever games conjured up by some unseen man.<\/p>\n

‘I Saw the Devil’ does try to get that ‘Dexter<\/a>‘ dichotomy going. How can a man kill other people and not become a monster himself? Still, it never quite gets there because it’s so focused on its violence just for violence sake.<\/p>\n

If you’re a fan of the films of Ji-woon Kim, you’ll probably enjoy this one too. Be warned, though \u2013 this one isn’t for the weak of stomach.<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong> \"★\"\"★\"\"★\"\"☆\"\"☆\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can a movie be too violent? For my personal taste, I would say yes. At 141 minutes, ‘I Saw the Devil’ is almost non-stop violence. This isn’t violence where the camera turns away and your brain does the guesswork. This is full-on, no-holds-barred, How-did-they-film-that-without-actually-killing-anyone? type of violence. That brings me to my next question: If…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4508],"tags":[1234,2144,6996,2146,1959],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10898"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80184,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10898\/revisions\/80184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}