I Saw the Devil

This Korean thriller starts strong. A woman is stranded on a snowy road then assaulted by a stranger. The stranger then brutally kills her even though she pleads that she is pregnant. Her husband, who is in the Korean version of the Secret Service, of course doesn't take this well. So he decides the world need some hot vengeance.

Now he starts off pretty right if you are going to go the crazed vigilante route.  He doesn't know who killed her, so he gets a list of likely suspects and then gives them hell as he crosses them off.  Since these suspects are all sleezoids the audience isn't too upset that he goes all Bronson on them.  Though certainly any male had an uncomfortable feeling when he took a wrench to a fellow's jewels. 

It's when he finds the guy finally that his plan goes off the rails.  In one of the most epically stupid ideas I've beheld in film, he tortures the guy and then LET'S HIM GO.  Why?  So he can capture him and torture him again.  I think we can all see the problem with this plan.  This is just thoughtlessly stupid and crazy.  Admittedly, it leads to some intense action like one scene where the stranger carjacks a taxi by repeatedly stabbing the driver as he is barrelling along an icy road (he's not all that rational either, but then he is the psycho killer here).  Still I just can't buy this.  It's good in places, too bloody in others, and just a thick slice of dumb all over.