I went headlong into tonight's review blind, having avoided most of the hub-bub about this South Korean exercise in 'torture porn' and screened it relatively free of outside influence, but with hopes high, as always.As far as the recent genre trend goes, I'm not the most hardcore fan here in my late summer years, but I'm not publicly campaigning against it like Troma's Lloyd Kaufman either.I love ultra-realistic gore effects and sadistic serial killers as much as the next cat, I'm just starting to mellow out a little now that my goatee is peppered with stray greys, I dunno.It's not like I'm ever gonna queue up at the theater for girlfriend-sating flotsam like Something Borrowed(2011)(unless she asks really, really nicely, that is.), I just require more substance than seeing some innocent teenage waif getting her titties blowtorched off in a dirty cellar for ninety minutes(apart from when my "rare moods" grab me, of course).That said, Kim Ji-woon's effort hardly qualifies as such, anyway.Despite all its splattery fishhookin', head choppin', neck shankin', achilles gougin' splendor, Devil is actually an original, beautifully shot, well-acted film with a compelling story.Hell, it's not even all that misogynistic, with most of the wince-worthy violence in front of the lens actually befalling men for a change; a torture porn that gals gone gonzo for gore can get behind.My only real complaint is the arduous 144 minute running time, which could have and should have been chopped by about twenty, for serious.I'm just relieved I caught it on disc and not in the theater, where my multiple smoke breaks woulda surely pissed whoever I was with well off.Let's make it...
col·lect·i·ble: n. (k-lkt-bl)things considered to be worth collecting (not necessarily valuable or antique)
Joo-yeon(Oh San-ha), pregnant daughter of a retired police chief and fiance to a top tier secret agent named Soo-hyun(Lee Byung-hun), is mercilessly abducted, abused, and posthumously parted out by a sadistic sociopath named Kyung-chul(Choi Min-sik),a serial rapist/murderer whose trail of bodies has the constabulary baffled.After a chunky kid finds her disembodied ear in a shopping bag near the river, a massive search party uncovers her severed head lodged in the rocks.Amidst a swarm of police and press, a forensics agent stumbles through with the disembodied dome in a cardboard box, dropping it and letting the macabre evidence roll past the bilious onlookers.After much mourning and tear-shedding, Soo-hyun vows to bring the barbarous bastard responsible for the crime to justice in his own special way, using his bereavement leave from work to hunt him down from a handful of possible suspects.He beats on a perverted netporn addict with a powerstrip cord after busting in on him wagging his wand to a clip of censorship-fogged fucking on his computer.Relax guys, that won't happen to you.One by one, he brutalizes the suspected perps until he's faced with the last, Kyung-chul, who's just snared his latest young victim by promising her a ride in the blustery night, and braining her with a length of pipe instead.We then watch Kyung apply some aftershave and strum an acoustic guitar.Hey, maybe he's not such a bad guy afterall.Soo investigates Kyung's pad, discovers his secret torture chamber, and finds Joo's blood-crusted ring in a drain on the floor.Meanwhile, Kyung is about to ravage a bound n' gagged schoolgirl in an earthen ditch in a greenhouse floor.Okay, maybe I was wrong earlier.Soo makes the scene and performs rapeus interruptus, bashing the living fuck out of Kyung and breaking his wrist before sinking a special tracking pill down his unconscious gullet.Kyung groggily comes to, alone with an envelope full of money on his chest.
"Yeahhhh, that's it, you hot little slut!Take it all... right in your censorship fogging..."
After viciously shanking up a pair of guys foolhardy enough to give him a lift(that happen to have a dead body of their own in the boot), Kyung gets his arm set at a medical center, unaware that Soo is now tracking him and tuned in to every word he says via headphones.The agent foils his attempts at adding an innocent young receptionist to his list of victims mid-blowjob, again beating the snot out of the killer, and this time, gouging his achilles tendon with a scalpel.He comes to in the back seat of his plundered cab, his leg wrapped in a cast.Soo follows him to the abode of a comrade-in-carnage named Tae-joo(Choi Moo-sung) who's half-mad from eating the human meat of his victims(!), where he bursts in as the cannibal is about to prep another whimpering meal-in-a-nightie and beats Kyung, Tae, and his psychotic girlfriend unconscious after a blood-soaked cat n' mouse throughout the house.At the hospital where the battered killers have been taken, Soo mistakenly mentions the tracking pill to a fellow agent within earshot of Kyung, who heists a handful of laxatives from a chemist and abruptly shits out the bug and plants it in another lavatory patron he's just walloped unconscious.Off the trail, Soo returns to the hospital and grills Tae about his friend's whereabouts, and when Tae reminds the agent that Kyung most likely raped his dead fiance before killing her, Soo fish hooks him right then and there(!!) for laughing about it.Kyung notifies the authorities that he'll be turning himself in that day,(but not before exacting some vengeance of his own against Joo's father and sister) leaving Soo in a mad dash to get to the killer before he can hurt any more of his loved ones and before he can safely deposit himself in the hands of the police.The wild final reel, not without its own cringe-worthy moments, I'll leave you to experience for yourselves.
Soo-hyun(Lee Byung-hun) is tendin' to Kyung-chul's achilles.Ba-dum-bump.I'm here all week, folks.
I'm a little embarrassed to say I haven't caught any of Kim's other work yet; from 1998's The Quiet Family, his segment of Three Extremes II(2002), A Tale of Two Sisters(2003), and The Good, the Bad, and the Weird(2008), I fully intend to right that wrong ASAP.Kim's obviously got a firm grasp on the art of filmmaking, and apparently transitions from genre to genre with relative ease.Apart from a mountain of roles in Korea, Lee Byung-hun can be seen in Hero(2007) and 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.Choi Min-sik has worked for Kim as well as scoring roles in Oldboy(2003) and 2005's Lady Vengeance.If you prep yourself for the lengthiness, you should be pleasantly surprised by Devil, as I was.On the scale it earns three solid big ones.Track this one down.
You know me, I never pass up the opportunity to screenshot a decent severed head.
No comments:
Post a Comment