jollylolly Lee Byung-hun is a kick ass. his face, his voice, the way he walks, the way he stares. im a fan of thriller/slasher/horror movies. and yet this one wowed me away. my blood pressure went up after watching this movie. i was in a mess, at the edge of the seat most of the times, i felt like screaming and punching someone. this movie gave me a whirlpool of emotions. it gives you an insight of what goes around in a killer's mind and the victim. audience gets to see a killer being hunted. this movie is beautiful. it's gory, yes, but it's beautiful.

masoperez I had heard this was a film to rival Park Chan-wook's "Oldboy"-and to some it might, as I'm aware many did not enjoy Oldboy as much as I did-but in all honesty I found it wanting in substance and gruelling in pace. It's a superficial and unsubstantial horror film that mainly sticks in the mind due to disturbing content, not disturbing themes.SPOILERS WILL BE INCLUDED BEYOND THIS POINTLet's handle each aspect of film itself to break down what I feel didn't work about the film:First, our Protagonist, Agent Soo-hyeon. What can be said about him other than his occupation and relationship with the victim? Well, very little. He is given a bit of extra characterization with a more vulnerable side at the beginning phone call, but after that point he becomes singular in his goals and shows next-to-no personality besides hesitance and blood lust. This would be fine if his plan made any sense. Don't get me wrong, I understand the concept of catch-and-release torture and why he might pick it, but not only does it immediately make him into an unlikable character, subjecting multiple women to horrifying conditions because he was continuously sloppy with his surveillance of his target. But also a lot of his choices are not only medically impossible to sustain (like constant knock-outs actually leading to brain damage) but also he makes ridiculous action-movie level choices that make the movie seem like a cartoon. The final death scene for the villain also seems hilariously out of theme, with him inflicting horror on the villain's family...a family the villain doesn't even care about.Speaking of Kyung-chul, he was mostly fine. See, in the movies there's always an ongoing attempt to explain a serial killer's reasoning or to make them refined/attractive to make them more horrifying. However, reading the real cases of killers reveals the vast majority of them are brutal simpletons who commit horrible crimes for no reason besides they can. I respected the decision to make Kyung-chul more in line with this type of thinking, but he's ruined in the final scene by trying to make him care about a family he outright abandoned to become a serial killer. It's very confusing.When it comes to the plot itself, it's structured well but is bogged down by ridiculously unbelievable set pieces and repetitive actions. The only thing to keep up continuous engagement is the shock value of the gore, which doesn't affect me personally all that much. The structure is mostly good but the choices of some characters (mainly our inconsistent protagonist) are too stupid to feel justifiable. All-in-all I was thoroughly disappointed.

CousinBagunca What a ride! And I enjoyed most of it for sure!This movie is tough to watch. Not because it is a bad movie, but because it is way too graphical. I'm not talking about most of the beating, gore, torture and whatsoever, because that I can endure, but to watch that one perverted Kyung-chul living and doing what he does was sickening to me (props to actor Min-sik Choi for his performance). And that's the whole plot! That's why the movie focus so much on Kyung-chul! Because it tries to make the audience to feel like Soo-hyeon; to want revenge too. Some acts are way over the top and I kinda disliked it. You see someone take a huge beating, I mean, HUGE, and the other day he's walking around like he just fell out of the stairs. I'm not sure about that.Overall, a fine movie about revenge, but might be way too much to watch for a day.

Robert J. Maxwell A beautiful, young Korean woman has car trouble on a deserted road at night. A car stops, the driver offers to help then breaks through the window, bludgeons her with a hammer, takes her to his filthy room, tortures her. "I'm pregnant. Please don't kill me." she manages to gasp. The middle-aged maniac looks puzzled for a second, then asks, "Why not?" The police find her dismembered body in a creek. Her husband is a detective on the police force and gets two weeks leave, during which he captures the killer two or three time, beats him half to death, severs his Achilles tendon, and commits other unpleasantries.So far, in abstract, so lousy. I dislike slasher movies generally, especially those that are handled as if murder were a joke, and I hate the emerging genre of torture porn. It wasn't THAT long ago that "Dirty Harry" shot a suspect in the leg in the middle of Kezar Stadium and then stepped on the wound in order to squeeze out the location of a young girl the suspect had buried alive. That was nothing compared to this.Yet, dare I say it? Despite the bathtubs of blood, the screams of horror, the terrible poundings, this is pretty deftly done. It avoids the usual clichés of horror and suspense. When a glass crashes and there is a loud sting on the sound track and it's just the cat, or when a hand reaches out for someone's shoulder and she jumps in fright and there is a WHAM on the sound track, or when a helpless woman takes a flashlight and investigates some curious noises in a dark and dangerous place -- well, none of that is to be found in "I've Seen the Devil." Nor does this young, handsome Korean Dirty Harry (Byung-hun Lee) come away from his plan with any taste of victory. His extra-legal pursuit and torture of the maniac has led to the murder of his wife's family. He'll be fired, taken to court, and he's accomplished nothing that could not have been accomplished with much less bloodshed and tears. Aside from the initial discovery of his wife's body, the only time he shows any emotion is in the last shot when, standing alone in the middle of a road, he breaks into searing and cathartic sobs.I think I'll give this one a pass, even though I loathe seeing people suffer. It's well acted, for one thing. The serial murder (Min-sik Choy) has the juiciest part and handles it with some originality. With the exception of one or two scenes, the hero is wooden in comparison. It's also neatly directed -- nothing fancy, just some scenes that make you realize the director knows what he's about.