- Severe
- Stylized, but sometimes brutal violence. Not as violent as many people make it out to be though, but still pretty violent at some points. In a 2 hour movie, there is maybe 10 minutes of violence, with the majority being saved for the last maybe 30-45 minutes. The violence is very realistic and grisly however and consists of two only partially shown torture scenes with teeth extraction, the famous hammer fight and a hand to hand combat scene.
- Most of the violence is not detailed at all. It's even very hard to see what really happens in some scenes.
- Just before the hammer hallway fight scene, a man holds a knife to a mans throat and you see the other man with a bloody towel or maybe it's a sock in the mouth. The thing is bloody because he having it in the mouth is the same guy who gets some of his teeth pulled out in the previous scene.
- Early into the movie, Dae-Su get into a fight with some young guys for taking a cigarette from one of them. No blood.
- It should be noted that while the torture, self-harm and murder scenes are disturbing and often graphic, the hand-to-hand combat or action sequences are almost always kept to a non-fatal and PG-13 level. The infamous hammer fight scene and the other scenes of fighting are not bloody or gruesome at all.
- Not for most people, because it's not a korean Tarantino/Kill Bill. Therefore it's no point in hiding it for mature children. No age rating, like in Italy. The 2013 remake is a 14, 15, 16+ though.
- A man attempts suicide by cutting his wrist in a couple scenes, plenty of blood is seen on the ground. Only the aftermaths are shown, but the man has prominent scars on his wrist for the rest of the film.
- Stock footage of disasters like 9/11 are shown for effect in one scene.
- A man commits suicide by jumping off a building. He lands on a car, startling several nearby people, but this isn't very graphic.
- A man rips out several of another man's teeth with a hammer as a form of torture. There is some blood seen and the act is briefly seen up close. Later, he's seen with a very bloody rag in his mouth.
- In a long, stylized, 0.0% initally realistic fight scene,a man hits several other men with a hammer while they hit him with several blunt weapons. The men are seen in various stages of pain from blunt force trauma. At one point, he is stabbed in the back and beaten up, but he wakes up and takes them all down, and sudenly this scene is still not the slightest realistic anymore. The scene features some blood and is in 99% shown in distance. It looks like a video game!
- A man attempts to rip out another man's teeth (in revenge for the man doing it to him) but gets stopped before he can. He then hits the man in the head with a bat, and he's seen in great pain. The attempted victim then threatens to cut of the others hand for molesting a woman.
- A man is stabbed to death with a broken disk by another man, this is hard to see as it's dimly lit, but it's still clear what happens.
- A man's severed hand is seen briefly. No blood, but a woman faints.
- A man gets into a fight with another man, he's violently thrown about a room, against several glass objects. In reality, he would bleed to death and not be able to go on like he does, which makes it suddenly 100% not so realistic. Eventually, the second man is stabbed in the ear with a pair of scissors, destroying his eardrum. Blood is seen leaking out of his ear while he attempts to stab the first man in the neck. He's then shot in the head before he can kill the first man.
- A man is seen with some blood on him after another man is shot and killed in front of him.
- A man shoots himself in the head, this is graphically seen with lots of blood and a bullet wound on his head.
- Infrequent but very strong, however there are two scenes which are quite graphic but they don't last for more than just a couple of seconds and the worst bits are not shown.
- A character cuts off his own tongue with a pair of scissors. We hear him screaming in agony as he does this, there's a very painful look on his face and the act is offscreen, but we see him cut with the scissors and then we hear some realistic noises and he coughs out plenty of blood as a result. This scene is very intense and disturbing, but also disgusting enough to make squeamish viewers and even someone with a strong stomach squirm.