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Sundance 2011: Reviews–’I Saw the Devil’ is Gory as HELL

Christie Ko — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 21:22:25 +0000

If you like Chan-Wook Park’s Vengeance Trilogy, you’ll love I Saw the Devil. Director Kim Jee-Woon’s latest thriller doesn’t hold back and doesn’t hesitate to go where you really don’t (but secretly do) want it to go. Everyone endures torture (whether physical, emotional, or psychological) and nobody really comes out on top. But unlike Saw or Hostel, I Saw the Devil is a game of torture you can really get behind. It has all the makings of a classic gore-fest. Its inventively sick and twisted violence builds into a crescendo of mayhem comparable to Old Boy.

Read on for the review.

The Players:

Director: Kim Jee-Woon
Writer: Park Hoon-jung
Cinematographer: Lee Mogae
Cast: Lee Byung-hun, Choi Min-sik

The Plot:

This is a revenge tail in which a young special agent’s fiancee is brutally murdered by a serial killer/rapist. He takes his revenge on him not by simply killing him, but by implanting a tracking device inside the killer and attacking him every time he tries to take another victim. It turns into a game of terror as he stalks the serial killer, breaking a wrist in one brawl, slicing his tendon in another – and taking him to the hospital to get bandaged up so he can do it again later. Of course, the tables turn on our hero when the killer gets wise to his tracking device. It ends with a gut-wrenching guillotine scene, after which it’s hard to decide the victor.

Review:

This film is definitely up to snuff in the Korean horror/thriller genre. It engages and manipulates the audience very insidiously and effectively. The world of the film seems to be peopled with serial killers who know each other– and at one point, it seems to turn into more of a villains versus villains type of story – which bad guy is a worse bad guy? Do we want our central villain to get killed by this new villain? NO! We want to see our hero maim our central villain more! And wait a second, our hero is far more violent than the serial killers; why am I okay with that…?

Every shot from beginning to end flawlessly conformed with the tone and purpose of the film. There were only a few “jump-out-at-you” moments, which can seem cheap if they’re over-numerous. But this film uses them very well, and they were far from the scariest scenes in the film. Kim Jee-Woon is a master craftsman of the well-built horror scene.

One thing to note is that this film is 141 minutes, and generally I have a hard time being exposed to violence for such a prolonged period. However, for the purposes of this film, it really worked. The length itself actually played a large part in the psychological horror of the film, which is the persistence of the hero to drag out his terrorism of the serial killer. It hooked me from the beginning and sustained momentum through the end.

Overall:

The movie takes everyone’s worst nightmare and then matches it with everyone’s worst revenge fantasy. If you like gore and violence, you have to see this film.

Rating: 7.5/10

Thirst: Movie Review

Laura Aguirre — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:05:22 +0000

You’re in for a sweet, sadistic treat. Oldboy director Chan-wook Park (read interview) brings a new perspective to vampire films with Thirst starring Kang-ho Song and Ok-vin Kim. If you’re going to see one vampire film this year, Thirst should be it — mainly because this is about as “real” as vampires. The film isn’t about “vampires” but uses the ideas behind vampires to see what humans would do if given the same liberties.

The film is absolutely stunning to watch, from the colors to the performances, this is the most twisted fun you’ll have in a theaters all year.

Check out our review of Thirst…

The Plot:

Sang-hyun (Kang-ho Song), is a young priest who will do anything, even go through an experimental blood transplant in order to try and save the people around him. While everyone else in the “experiment” dies off, Sang-hyun comes back to life… well kind of. The disease has left him a few familiar symptoms. He can no longer eat food, his senses are extremely acute, he can’t go out in the sun, and he can no longer control his lust. To add to his problems he has his eyes set on his childhood friend’s wife, Tae-ju (Ok-vin Kim). At first she falls for him until she finds out about his “condition.” Can she, or rather will she still love him and run away with him?

The Good:

Fucked Up Female Power: Finally a film written about a man, but for a women. More often than not, it’s the other way around. Normally women play the demure housewives, sexy girlfriends, or abused victims in need of saving, while the men get to run around and be crazy, but not in this film. The film’s co-starring character Tae-joo gets to be insane for no greater reason than the fact that she is simply fucked up and BOY is it fun to watch. Which leads me to…
Ok-vin Kim: Kim plays Tae-joo and gives one of the strongest female performances I’ve seen this year. She’s frighteningly beautiful and yet sadistically manipulative. Every moment she’s on on screen she either surprises or intrigues you. Although she plays a woman who appears to be a victim, she is like an uncontrollable ball of energy, and even her tiniest movements jump off the screen.
The Perfect Three: Put together cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung, visual effects supervisor Jihyun Nam, and director by Chan-wook Park and you get irresistible eye candy. The colors and tone of the shots are like looking at a painting. The effects are simple and yet perfectly executed. The story and the set up for every scene is awe-inspiring. This film is art at its finest.
The Humor: A film like this can get serious way to fast and without a bit of humor, the run-time (133 minutes) can feel a bit long. Thanks to Park’s odd sense of humor you will definitely be laughing and cringing your way through a number of moments in the film.

The Bad:

(SPOILER AHEAD)

Mid-Way Blues: Towards the middle of the film there were about 15 minutes in which the two main characters are tormented by their guilt, that went on for too long. The scenes last for about 10-15 minutes and you start to lose track of what the film is supposed to me. In a way it felt like the director was indulging in what he thought was fun or funny. And although it was both fun and funny, it went on a bit too long and wasn’t needed for the story.

Overall:

See this movie. I don’t want to give anymore away. It’s amazing and will not disappoint!

Rating: 9.2/10

The film is in select theaters now. Check out the trailer below…

Interview with Chan-wook Park Director of Thirst

Mali Elfman — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:04:23 +0000

Many of you know Chan-wook Park from his classic film Oldboy (which is about to be remade and most likely murdered by Will Smith and Steven Spielberg). The film put him on the map in the US as one of the most imaginative, violent, and visionary directors of our time. When it comes to Thirst, he does not disappoint, dare I say he raises the bar even for himself.

For such a violent and crazy film-maker, when Park sat down for the interview, he seemed rather shy and polite, although even with a translator the man had a wicked sense of humor. He told us about his experiences with film-making, unlike many other directors, he did not go to film school, in fact he did not even have the chance to watch many of the classic films that many people say he reminds them of. Talking to him made me believe in fate — this man was born to make films.

Enough from me, check out the interview below…

Note: Just to be clear, Chan-wook Park uses a translator for his interviews, so in the transcription you’ll see the word “he” instead of “I” when he’s talking about himself. Don’t worry, you’ll catch on quickly enough…

The film walks the line between a horror film and at times a comedy. How did you balance between the humor and the seriousness of what you were doing?

Ten years ago, he couldn’t dream that he would end up with a film like this because at the time he was determined to actually make a humorless film, so much so that he told himself he would make the darkest and most serious film in the history of cinema. But, a filmmakers tendency or personality isn’t something that can be changed by determination because even though he decided that he would make a very serious film, he ended up with something like this. So the more they jump around full of rage, become the subject of violence or tremble in fear in anticipation of such violence, in these situations if you just shift the angle a little bit, if you change the point of view or if you change the size of zoom, then you are able to capture humor in that situation. There’s not much difference at all actually, between something that is dark and serious, and something that is hilarious.

Why in this point in your career do you find yourself dealing with the supernatural in your work? There’s always been a surreal quality to it but here it seems there’s a clear super-natural element. Is that just a chance or was that something that’s been drawing you in a certain direction for sometime?

This film is something that he’s been thinking about for a long time so it’s not like he came out with this film now and to say say “we need something like this.” But, for a vampire film, he reckons you can almost say it’s the most realistic approach for a vampire film and by decreasing the amount of super-naturalism in this film, he thinks that he was able to meet at the middle point. There are surreal elements in this film so he was bringing down the super-naturalism in this film to meet with a level of surrealism found in his previous films. If you think back, to his past work, fantastical elements have been on the increase, if you just look at Sympathy For Lady Vengeance or Lady Vengeance, there is an increasing fantastical element.

On one hand you can almost say this is part of that progression to reach Thirst like this but although, he is bringing down the super-naturalism of fantastical elements. For example, in the film, when they are playing majong at the house, Sang-hyeon comes downstairs for a secret rendezvous with Tae-joo, the female lead. Their act of love making is stopped and she returns by walking upstairs Sang-hyeon walks out of the costume and he jumps up to grab at a window ledge of the bathroom and in your usual vampire film this would be done very fluent in motion and his movements would be graceful. Where as in this film, the way he holds on to the ledge, there’s something awkward about it. He doesn’t quite get the timing right and his body swerves to one side. So this is how, although there is supernatural in this film that he wants to differentiate it from other films.

I’d like to ask, why attracts you especially to vampires and vampire mythology?

Of course this film started from being a story about a Catholic priest and vampire was something was brought in and in order to put this Catholic priest through the most (11:37) trial imaginable. But if you ask him what elements of vampirism in general that he finds interesting, it’s unlike his other films, it’s not about vampires being immortal or them having super powers or them being very beautiful, to behold, but it’s the fact that they can only consume blood, that they can only drink blood and they can only, they’re nocturnal, they can only move-about during the night. It is very limited in what they can do, so almost, someone to be sympathize with these poor creatures that have all his limitations placed on him, these limitations that they did not seek.

Most of the time, in many films, the men are the one’s out going crazy and the women are the one’s that reel them in but in this movie you have a woman who gets to be completely crazy and insane and dare I say fucked up, for just the sake of it, there’s no better explanation. I was wondering if you can speak a little bit on that.

Maybe it’s because all the women around him are like that. (laughter) When he says that he, he does so because he would say this during the interviews and what-not, when he says that he would like to bring out female characters to the floor a little more, and treat them like more of the man character and compared with how women are traditionally described in films. And compared with how the women characters, female characters in his previous films. But when he says this, he doesn’t necessarily mean that he wants to put them in this good role model kind of characters. He doesn’t think that you are really treating them right for that. Sometimes his characters, he will put his female characters and give them these personalities that will be sometimes crazy, or sometimes they will be plain bad or sometimes they would do foolish things. By doing that, he thinks he is really treating these female characters right and doing them justice.

How do you choose your leading ladies? A lot of time, I know, that you surprise the audience with your choice of main female character.

All the process of the decisions of film-making are based on reason; based on calculation and logic. However, when it comes to choosing his leading ladies, rather than base his choice or decision on reason or logic he seems to rely more on his instincts and in his gut feeling. So because his decisions are based on gut feeling, it is really hard to explain, but if he was pushed, in this instance the thing that drew him to Ok-vin Kim was the fact that she’s a very unsettled person. This may not have been a good thing for this film for the requirements of the role, but he also got the same feeling he had when he saw Hye-jeong Kang for the first time for a role in Oldboy.

What kind of horror films did you look up to? When you approach this movie what inspired you?

Not having gone to film school and as somebody who has studied film on his own, before he became a film director, when he was young in Korea, there was no cinematek and all he would be able to, all he could have access to were films that had been released at the cinema or through Hollywood. He didn’t really have the opportunity to watch all the classic films. He only could access them through reading about them in these books. So you could say he almost has no tradition or he hasn’t, his study of film was really here and there and there was no system to it. He would ask peop;e who were going overseas to get some videos on their way back and that sort of thing. He wasn’t, he couldn’t really be aware of this heritage of cinema or to claim some sort of lineage.

For instance, before he was able to see any of the classic films he would see the Cohen Brothers films. But, if he considers who most influenced his work as more and more he gets older and reflects on this question, he comes to the realization that the Korean director Kim Ki-Yun has been the figure with the most influence on his film-making. This was a Korean director who’s most prolific during the 60’s and 70’s and he’s much older than him so he’d be part of the previous generation and this director would have been influenced by his kids or his colleagues who made films during that time when he was making films. And these influences would be filtered by this director Kim Ki-yun and handed down to him.

This is in-part related to the question before about how he chooses his leading ladies as well. One of the things that he was attracted to about Kim Ok-vin was this great contrast between her beautiful face and her hands, these tough looking, very thick and, with long lengthy fingers with sturdy looking joints. It’s very scary imagining this hand grasping hold of your men, and manipulating them and controlling them and really having a grip on the men. So much so, that he actually included a shot of this in the film, of her hand grasping and gripping the shoulder of a male character. But this image of a beautiful female character grasping or gripping onto the male character is a class Kim Ki-Yun moment.

Also, you can view this film as being powered by film world tradition as well in the vein of The Postman Always Rings Twice. So in a sense this film is a story about a woman who plots to murder her husband with her lover, so it follows that sort of tradition, but again this is all actually contained in Emile Zola’s novel and all the story elements. So if you try and look at all the different elements in this film, and there are a great number of them, if you try and track down all the influences be it Eastern or Western, it’s a great mix and fusion of all these element which influence this film. If you try and track down, the process would be very interesting indeed, almost as anthropologists and archaeologists quest to dig up and try and find treasure under the ground.

The film deals with a relationship within a family that ultimately proves as more destructive in a way, than the super-natural forces. For you, does the family hold the greatest potential to violence or destruction in society?

If you look at the family dynamics from Tae-joo’s point of view you could make that observation as according to her line of dialogue when she says she was raised as a dog or she says her, this family’s opinion towards a marriage was that she started sleeping with mother one day and then the next day after marriage she’s now sleeping on the bed of her son. So for this character, a marriage is kind of like a prison or hell that she’s trapped in and if you’re looking at it from that prespective.

But if you are looking at it from Sang-Hyeon’s point of view the argument is more religious or it has to do with existing age of condition for a human being. Now Sang-Hyeon, just like the idea of Catholicism or vampire, notions that originate from the West and made their way into Korea. Sang-Hyeon is an outside element that penetrates into this family, a very closed family and just like virus enters your body or just like a vampire’s blood reaches into your system and turns you, changes you into something else entirely. So one of the main things of this film is in looking at external elements and entering into an internal environment and to see how the internal environment reacts to that.

***Spoilers Ahead***

So an interesting result of these two characters meeting together is in looking at how this mother-in-law changes from a very typical bad character and how she changes after her paralysis. After her paralysis, she observes these two characters with those two eyes that are reminiscent of eyes of God, for instance. Before she was paralyzed she was this very active person, she would be talkative, she would be energetic, she would be slapping people around but after being paralyzed all she can do is observe and look at these two characters and in her eyes, you feel almost this omnipotent power, so she almost becomes this Godly being where she observes these two characters and through the observation, she affects then as well. Sang-Hyeon for instance is jolted by the way he’s looked at by her when he’s drinking Tae-joo’s blood. Just the way she has this ever present eyes, eyes that are always there, looking at you, right up to the moment of their demise at the end of the film, this is the dramatic result of Sang-Hyeon and Tae-joo’s character meeting up together.

Check out Thirst in theaters now.

Movie Releases: Funny People, The Cove, Thirst…

Anet Hovhanesian — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:36:18 +0000

Adam Sandler is back to what he does best, making us laugh. In Judd Apatow‘s Funny People Sandler joins funny men Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill in a film about a seasoned comedian who finds out he doesn’t have much time to live. Hope the movie is as good as the hype has been.Another film definitely worth checking out this week is Chan-wook Park‘s Thirst. If you only see one vampire film this year, this should be it.

Here is a list of the movies opening July 31st:

Funny People | Screencrave Review |Reviews| Shotimes and Tickets
Aliens in the Attic |Reviews| Shotimes and Tickets
The Cove | Interview: Louie Psihoys |Reviews| Shotimes and Tickets
The Collector |Reviews| Shotimes and Tickets
Thirst |Reviews| Shotimes and Tickets
Lorna’s Silence |Reviews| Shotimes and Tickets
Adam | ScreenCrave Review | Hugh Dancy Interview |Reviews| Shotimes and Tickets

Watch the trailers…

Funny People

Aliens in the Attic

The Cove

The Collector

Thirst

Lorna’s Silence

Adam

Which movie coming out this week you are planning to see?

Spielberg’s Oldboy is Moving Forward

Krystal Clark — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:00:06 +0000

Some film’s you just can’t stop from being made, especially when Steven Spielberg is it’s driving force. A few weeks back we told you about the legal woes that are currently surrounding the director’s adaptation of the Japanese manga, Oldboy. The book was already produced into a successful live action film by Chan-wook Park, and Spielberg along with Will Smith want to do the same for the American audience. Too bad the manga’s publisher Futabasha is pissed, and are doing everything in their power to keep this from happening.

See what Spielberg has to say about the film’s future after the jump.

Futabasha is suing the Korean production company Show East over the remake rights to the story, since they’re supposed to help produce the English version. Even amidst all the legal turmoil, IGN states that Spielberg and Smith are “moving forward” with the film. If I were them I would be a bit more concerned at this point, and I’m not referring to the drama inside the courtroom.

Apparently, since Futabasha started it’s attack, Show East has closed down and their CEO Kim Dong-Ju is missing! If that wasn’t enough, all attempts to contact the companies ex-staff members have fallen on deaf ears. Everyone seems to be “unreachable.” “We haven’t been able to confirm that Show East is bankrupt, and at this stage we’re not sure what effect this will have on the legal case,” a Futabasha spokesperson said.

This sounds dangerous and suspicious. I know Spielberg and Smith are powerhouses in Hollywood, but do they want to go up against these guys? They scare me, and I’m not even involved.

What do you think of Spielberg and Smith’s decision to continue with the Oldboy?

NEWS: Oldboy Won’t Be a Remake of Chan-wook Park’s Film

Mali Elfman — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:51:15 +0000

Two weeks ago is was announced that Steven Spielberg and Will Smith would be teaming up to remake Oldboy. The reaction was less than positive. The film is a classic and fans were not taking to the idea of a dulled down American remake. Will Smith officially confirmed to FilmSchoolRejects on the red carpet for Seven Pounds that yes he will be starring in version of Oldboy, but it’s not based off Chan-wook Park‘s 2003 version.

Here is what he had to say…

We’re looking at that right now. Not the film though, it’s the original source material. There’s the original comics of ‘Oldboy’ that they made the first film from. And that’s what we’re working from, not an adaptation of the film…,” said Smith.

According the FSR Spielberg will not be obtaining the rights to the film, but to the novel.

So does this mean that they are truly trying to tap into the source of Oldboy and not just slaughter it for an American box office payday? Will this really be a different film? Or is this just a lot of babble?

What do you think? Are you excited for the film?

Source: FilmSchoolRejects

ScreenCrave.com » chan-wook park

Sundance 2011: Reviews–’I Saw the Devil’ is Gory as HELL

The Players:

The Plot:

Review:

Overall:

Rating: 7.5/10

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Thirst: Movie Review

The Plot:

The Good:

The Bad:

Overall:

Rating: 9.2/10

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Interview with Chan-wook Park Director of Thirst

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Spielberg’s Oldboy is Moving Forward

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