I Saw the Devil

Kim Jee-woon again, this time aiming all that craft at a two-and-a-half-hour endurance test. A secret-service agent catches the serial killer who murdered his fiancée, then decides killing him once would be a waste, so he beats him half to death and lets him go, again and again, turning revenge into a catch-and-release hobby. Lee Byung-hun and Oldboy's Choi Min-sik play it as a duel between two men racing to see who runs out of soul first, and the film is honest enough to suggest the avenger is losing that race. The Korean ratings board rejected it twice over the violence, and the cuts eventually forced on it still leave one of the most sustained streaks of cruelty in modern genre cinema. Immaculately made, and it will cost you something to watch.