The Chaser

The chase is on, more or less, in Na Hong-jin’s thriller.

“Wait till I catch you.”

Jung-ho (Kim Yoon-seok) is a former cop turned pimp, who’s lost more than a few of his girls to a person he believes is selling them on. In actuality, the client is Young-hee (Ha Jung-woo), a serial killer, and Jung-ho has inadvertently sent his latest girl Mi-jin (Seo Young-hee) to the slaughter. Things get complicated when nosy neighbours arrive, and Jung-woo encounters Young-hee while looking for Mi-jin.

There’s a lot going on here, and most of it happens in the first half an hour. I’ve always liked when films do something a bit unexpected, like have an interaction between the hero and villain early on, as it tends to lead to some interesting new dynamics and a direct confrontation usually allows for more personal stories. The tricky part of running this kind of story is filling in the blanks between the first interaction, and the last. And that’s where The Chaser occasionally fumbles.

Before that, I’d like to commend Ha Jung-woo who plays an absolutely incredible serial killer. His coldness isn’t as detached from reality as similar serial killers – see your Buffalo Bills or whatever.  Instead, he plays his character as a remorseless monster who owns up to his crimes, and is only triggered when his deeply rooted psychosexual issues come out. It’s a shame, then, that he spends most of the movie in police custody being questioned, driven about, and largely brushed aside.

By contrast Kim Yoon-seok’s Jung-ho is a bit more restrained. His character isn’t the most exciting. He serves more as a conduit through which tense scenes and investigations can happen. He’s not even a particularly sharp cop, as he refuses to believe Young-min could have killed people at first, believing it only to be a case of him selling prostitutes. As such, when the police get involved and Young-min is in the police station, things slow down a bit. This drains some of the cat and mouse tension that had been building up, and replaces it with a lot of scenes of people trying to find evidence. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a touch less exciting than I was initially expecting.

That said, director Na Hong-jin has a lot of talent for making typically less interesting investigations more gripping than you’d think. The Wailing, his follow-up film, is loaded with scenes like this, and it is refreshing to see, when so many other serial killer thrillers are about one man hunting another one down for the entire film. The Chaser certainly has something to say about the state of the police, and a justice system that is more than happy to let a man who won’t stop confessing to murders go free.

The Chaser is a film that will remind you of the earlier works of David Fincher, and is the sort of classic serial killer movie that doesn’t get made all that much anymore. It’s dark, sometimes abandoning logic or embracing coincidence for the sake of getting grimmer (I wasn’t a big fan of the shop scene at the end, for example). But with some great performances, wonderfully moody direction and a tension that lingers throughout, even during some of the less interesting scenes of police tedium, the film might not always hit the sweet spot, but when it knows what it wants, it chases after it and won’t let go.

Verdict: Sometimes disjointed, but always impactful, The Chaser hooks you in with tense scenes, and carries you away with some killer performances.

Overall entertainment: 8/10
Violence: 5/10
Sex: 2/10
Foolish shopkeepers: 1
Chases: Only 1, maybe 2
Mi-jin: Poor woman. She just wanted to stay home and rest.
Extreme close-ups: One tooth brushing scene

The Chaser (2008)
Also known as: 추격자
Korean

Director: Na Hong-jin
Writers: Na Hong-jin, Shinho Lee, Hong Won-chan

CAST

Kim Yoon-seok – Jung-ho
Ha Jung-woo – Young-min
Seo Young-hee – Mi-jin
Koo Bon-woong – Oh-jot
Kim Yoo-jung – Eun-ji
Jung In-gi – Lee
Park Hyo-joo – Oh
Choi Jung-woo – Chief of Police