I've only ever walked out of one movie in my lifetime, and it happened when I was eleven years old. One summer day in 1997, my pre-pubescent mind just couldn't handle the ridiculous kangaroo-samurai of WARRIORS OF VIRTUE, and refused to tolerate it for one more minute. I headed to the lobby to eat my peanut butter cups in peace and wait for my dad and brother. This seemingly simple act had two complex, long-lasting effects on my impressionable young mind: one, witnessing the magic of slacker movie theatre employees shoot the shit about movies while all the theatres were in and they had nothing to do can probably be directly correlated to my working in movie theatres for the better part of a decade; and two, in the days and months to come, I began to suspect that maybe I had missed ... something ... by walking out of WARRIORS OF VIRTUE, something ill-defined but valuable, and I resolved to never walk out of a film again (a later viewing of the specific film in question during my twenties did nothing to definitively prove this notion, at least as it relates to the kangaroo-samurai genre).
Of course, I've come close to walking out of films since then: I've written about my disdain for Clint Eastwood's GRAN TURINO before, one of my favourite whipping-boys, and there have been some truly regrettable experiences that refuse to leave my cinematic memory, from KICKIN' IT OLD SKOOL to ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. On the search for new, exciting films, you're bound to find a few that don't speak to you. That's just part of the gamble. I suffer through these films with a certain begrudging acceptance, in a sort of unspoken pact with the movie gods that this is just the way it goes, sometimes.
But when I see a film like I SAW THE DEVIL (AKMAREUL BOATDA), I get angry.
I bemoan films like GRAN TURINO or ACROSS THE UNIVERSE because of the tremendous amount of skill and talent that went into making these films, all in service of hackneyed ideas (as opposed to a work like KICKIN' IT OLD SKOOL, which is just a cinematic abortion from frame one). I SAW THE DEVIL firmly belongs to this category. It's a tremendously polished and affecting film, plunging you into an incredibly disturbing serial rapist/killer story and never really letting you go.
"Harrowing" is an overused word, especially in film. Splashing any word on the cover of K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER will rob that word, whatever that word is, of some of its power. But I SAW THE DEVIL is harrowing in the true sense of the word. It's beyond hard to watch, its violence graphic and sudden, shocking even to jaded viewers. It got underneath my skin, and such power has to be commended. If visceral reaction was the only merit on which we judged film, I would applaud I SAW THE DEVIL and urge you all to see it.
But viscera is not the only criteria on which we should judge film. Film should serve a higher purpose than that. I SAW THE DEVIL does nothing with its incredible power. It is more than content to play out a seemingly never-ending string of horrifying scenes in front of you, then make a half-hearted, cynical attempt to make this a story about how becoming a monster to stop a monster will ruin more lives than it brings justice to. If memory serves, no less than three characters have a line to that exact effect, using a sledgehammer to drive home thematic ideas when it's been using a scalpel for everything else. It's a film that gives the viewer tremendous credit, except when it comes to the big stuff. It's bereft of ideas, or at least ideas beyond a higher plane of cool and or bloodcurdling ways to kill people.
I'm not going to pretend that my criticism of this film isn't rooted in moral outrage. This film offended me. I'm not against displaying the horrors that humanity is capable of, but there has to be a reason for putting those things on display for me. It's the reason I have a problem with the bulk of the horror genre, or at least the sections of it that isn't straight-out exploitative outrageousness (PIRANHA 3D) or has larger social implications (FRAILTY, THE THING). The director of I SAW THE DEVIL, Jee-woon Kim, previously made THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WEIRD, a film that I loved, so maybe I'm not seeing something. Feel free to open my eyes with comments below.
When the film was finally over (I think even the most strident fan of this film would have to admit that you don't need 147 minutes to tell this story), I was getting up to leave and overheard the man in front of me mention something about how great the film was. It was a viewpoint I couldn't understand, had no sympathy for nor had an interest in exploring, and I left the theatre and went home without saying so much as "goodbye" to the friends I had come to the theatre with.
So to those friends, sorry I left without talking to you. It was the closest I could get to walking out on the movie. Why don't you come over one night and we'll watch WARRIORS OF VIRTUE together?
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