The Chaser

The Chaser

Starring:
Kim Yoon-seok, Ha Jeong-woo, Seo Yeong-hee, Koo Bon-woong, Kim Yoo-jeong
Directed by:
Na Hong-Jin
Written by:
Na Hong-Jin
Genre:
Action, Crime, Thriller
Year:
2008
Country:
Korea
Language:
Korean
Runtime:
123 mins
Rating:
8    19816_cover.jpg ¨
 
Synopsis

Ex-cop pimp Jung-ho is irritated because his girls keep disappearing
without clearing their debts. One night, he gets a call from a customer
and sends Mi-jin. Jung-ho realizes the phone number of the customer
matches that of the calls the missing girls got last. As something
smells fishy, he searches for her. During his search, Jung-ho dents a
car in the alley. When Jung-ho spots blood splattered on the driver’s
shirt, he senses the man, Young-min, is the suspect. After an intense
chase, Jung-ho catches Young-min. But because of Jung-ho’s pretense as
a cop, they are both taken to the police station. At the station, the
man bluntly confesses he has killed the missing women, and the last
girl, Mi-jin, may still be alive. As the whole police force is obsessed
with a random search for corpses, Jung-ho is the only one who believes
Mi-jin is still alive. With only 12 hours left to detain the serial
killer without a warrant, Jung-ho’s hunt begins, searching for Mi-jin
entrapped in a place nobody knows.

Location

Review


”A gory, heart pounding thriller”
 
It is not often that Korea produces a truly gem of a thriller movie…in fact one could say it’s quite difficult to find an excellent thriller movie anywhere.  “The Chaser” is truly that.  The unique twists and coincidences that the movie presents won’t confound audiences by any means as the killer is known early on.  What is so interesting is how events play out that lead up to the ending of the movie.  Western audiences will be appalled at the not-so-happy ending that they are so accustomed to in Hollywood, but here in Korea is pretty commonplace.  
 
The failure and inadept Police were points of frustration for me, as i
kept asking myself why they didn’t search in a radius from her car in
the first place…and how they took the killer’s confessions always
blindly without doubt.
 
However, my biggest complaint would be the lack of depth in the character development.  The killer is an interesting character but the movie failed to dig into his psyche and show us how he thought, and why he might do these things, something that made Hannibal Lector such a striking character in the movie “Silence of the Lambs”.  Here however, most of the movie centers on the actions and events playing out rather than allowing us a peek into the psycho killer…something that i felt would have catapulted this movie to a perfect score.
 

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