Jee-woon Kim's crazed vengeance thriller follows the bewildering cat-and-mouse conflict between Kim Soo-hyeon, one of Korea’s most ruthless secret agents, and Kyung-chul, the psychopath that murdered his wife. We are introduced to the serial killer almost immediately, and Kim captures him soon after, meaning that mystery and suspense are quickly dispensed with. The ensuing story takes its queue from a surprising act: after beating Kyung-chul half to death, Kim nurses him back to health and leaves him with a thick wad of cash. The good cop has broken bad, he isn’t interested in the death or imprisonment of his wife’s killer, he wants to play…
As Kyung-chul preys on new victims and attempts to lay low with accomplices, Kim regularly appears to provide another agonising and tortuous beating. Kyung-chul slowly realises that he will never escape the unpredictable punishments of his ghostly nemesis: the hunter is now the hunted, and his face, frozen in fear, becomes the mask of his many victims. He escapes, of course, and Kim is forced once again to hunt him down before the desperate murderer can kill another of Kim’s dearest intimates.
Jee-woon Kim doesn’t bother too much with subtlety or realism (there are severed heads tumbling out of forensic briefcases, for heaven’s sake). Instead he concentrates on eking out a truly haunting thrill from the long, mundane battle between the bumbling psychopath and his ghostly, grieving tormentor. It is a masochistic vision that takes great pleasure in the slow and methodical instruments of violence and pain. The moral story revolves around the futility of vengeance; and by the end of the film we really are numb to all the anger and violence.
The only respite we are given from this bleak and horrific vision is the maniacal sense of humour that skips in and out of scenes like Macbeth’s porter. It is a grotesque hysteria that only adds to the chilling tone of the film, but that doesn’t make it any less funny in the moment. Watch out for the moment that Kyung-chul agonisingly attempts to remove a screwdriver from his hand, only for the handle to pop off instead!
Kim’s relentless vision would be even less watchable if it weren’t for the superb performances of his leading men. Byung-hun Lee (a precociously talented actor who looks barely half of his 40 years) is superb as the broken cop. He has the capacity to appear entirely in control – a hero – and then in the flicker of an eyelid he descends into violent madness. He is utterly convincing as the grieving man who is only just learning what he is capable of.
When we first meet Min-sik Choi, our rampaging psychopath, it is only Kim’s sledgehammer bluntness that alerts us to the fact he is a madman at all, so innocent and charming is his demeanour. But as we sink deeper into his grasp, Choi finds alarming new ways to lower himself further into the mind of the beast.
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