Film Comments Selects’ eleventh annual Lincoln Center lineup, “16 Films you will not see in U.S. theaters,” boasts a high quotient of antisocial Evil. Whether or not a gauge of society gone media-fueled amok, or of filmmakers each day compelled to top yesterday’s body count, two of the three co-presentations with Subway Cinema show that Asia leads in visual viscera, black humor-tinged though it may be. Sono’s Cold Fish, a “based-on” serial-killer entry from Japan, is topped for dismemberment, sadism and some forced sex by Jee-woon Kim’s I Saw the Devil/Akmareul boatda, which was initially banned in South Korea although not for the cannibalism tossed in as sidebar dressing. The two films have runtimes three minutes apart, just short of two-and-a-half hours.

A six-film Kim retrospective is about to start at Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek. Adapting the screenplay, the varied-genre director here pushes the sicko-violence envelope. There is no poetic prettifying slo-mo “ballet of death,” and the cruelty of villain and hero alike is unapologetic, the two, indeed, at times virtually changing places. There are spots of laugh-humor -- fishhooks on the floor and a hilarious loose knife handle -- but audience giggles were from tension or arguably from too much of yet another over-the-top serial wacko (Hauer’s The Hitcher was an hour less).

Something will doubtless be made of the evil that good men do, which implies just if flawed intentions. Here, instead, the good guy, a loving fiancé, son- and brother-in-law to-be and natty police special agent, turns inhuman in reprisal for the inhumanity of another. Is this move to the dark side, for any reason whatsoever, not a victory for the Devil?

His fleshly face as easily an everyman’s as a stone killer’s, Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi, returning from a three-year hiatus in protest of his country’s film quota system) is the unflappable killer of mostly females, whom he sometimes assaults sexually before dismemberment. It is improbable that local women are not on their guard and that he still works as a yellow school-van driver, but his newest victim is Ju-yeon (San-ha Oh). His “error” involves her being  the pregnant fiancée of agent Soo-hyun (Byung-hun Lee) and daughter of police squad captain Jang (Kook-haun Chun).

SPOILER ALERT

Not releasing tears until the very final frames, Soo-hyun will accept no more than two weeks’ bereavement leave and shares his plan of vengeance with Jang, who violates procedure in supplying names of possible perpetrators but soon tries to dissuade the younger man from continuing extra-legally. Two of the four suspects are brutalized by the agent-turned-vigilante but, innocent of this particular murder, dismemberment and beheading, handed over to detective section head Oh (Ho-jin Chun).

The third is Kyung-chul, whose abandoned parents and son the vigilante locates and will later use. Thus, the hunter knows his prey early on and through a GPS device is able to follow his movements up to a point. Thwarting the criminal when he can, Soo-hyun is careful not to administer the mercy of a coup de grâce or police arrest.

Instead, the cat-and-mouse game and beatings administered, are to inflict the maximum pain this side of death: “Your nightmare’s only getting worse.” At first bewildered, the toyed-with killer realizes what is happening and from whom, and happily joins battle. His foul-mouthed actions spring from no discernable cause. While his clean-cut adversary has reasons, in his crusade he turns himself into what he stalks. Soo-hyun’s “error,” the villain points out, lies in not having killed him on any of several opportunities. Like Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh, this motiveless malignity steals the show from the beyond-Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey avenger hero, so much so that seconds of contrite begging are disappointing and hopefully really the put-on he at once pretends.

Passed the point of diminishing returns, nevertheless, the cat-and-mouse/mouse-and-cat goes on too long. Already at Sundance, Toronto and Fantastic Fest, I Saw the Devil is like its characters in that overkill hits you over the head too much. Subtitling will hurt in this country, but it will find its ghoulish niche, anyway. Besides, it may mirror nitty-gritty “news” details that even today’s sensationalist press shies away from. 

(Released by Magnet Releasing; not rated by MPAA.)