The experience of watching this movie is akin to having your emotions scraped out with an ice cream scoop. The movie ended and I just sat there feeling empty and helpless, realizing that so many things are unfair and unjust and bad things happen to good people and bureaucracy is always about the power and never about the people.

Current Korean cinema knows how to do revenge thrillers, and they're quite adept at showing the incompetence of the justice system, but what really elevated this movie was the humor. It makes watching the film bearable, indeed it makes it so painfully human. For a film called The Chaser, the chase scenes in here are not at all your typical slick…

How misleading. The Chaser is no revenge thriller. It's police procedural. I've went in with wrong expectations, so things kind of dragged for me. They were sitting around smoking and chilling when I was anticipating for some hammer action, guess it's my fault for stereotyping. Still, surprises are always welcomed. I'm glad to say that The Chaser is one of the better surprises. Think Memories of Murder meet Se7en, Silence of the Lambs meet, uh, Oldboy.

Desperation, violence, torture, they're there. A sick, insane antagonist? Yup. Thinking about Ha Jung Woo's twisted smirk still makes my hair stand on end. Only thing missing is Choi Min Sik, any film's two times better with Choi Min fucking Sik.

I sounded like…

The French find a coolness in the existential. Italians have a seeming monopoly on the neo-realist revelations to the beautifully baroque. Japan finds its mavericks just at home in the surgically humanist as the colourfully bizarre. America then, marks a grand birthplace to the glitzy glamour and the quietly quaint alike. South Korea, more than anything, harbors a twisted love affair with the morbid revenge flick.

Of course, I’m being needlessly reductive. But watching The Chaser, it’s hard not to conjure up the same stock buzz phrases thrown around time after time; This is dark. Grim. Fucked-up. Stomach-churning. Laced with a searingly sardonic sarcasm, seeping through it’s graphic realisations of brutal violence right down to the glibly harsh dialogue, flying…

Taking a quick peek at the stars afforded this Korean revenge thriller by my friends here, I have a feeling my take isn’t going to be too popular.

I don’t have an issue with ultraviolence. I love Kim Ki-duc’s work, especially Moebius, and Kubrick’s ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and Tarantino’s ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ are amongst my favourite cinematic moments. I certainly don’t have issue with the typical Korean revenge film; in fact I can’t think of a single one I haven’t loved. It can’t be that it was about saving a little girl, like The Man From Nowhere, because I loved that one too.

No, I think it’s because this film has less in common with all…

A former detective, now turned pimp, investigates the disappearance of some of his girls, initially suspecting that they've run afoul of a human trafficking ring. Like many thrillers to come out of South Korea in recent years, this is a beautifully crafted film. It's easily on par with such films as Park Chan-wook's Oldboy, or Kim Jee-woon's I Saw the Devil. Kim Yoon-seok delivers a stellar performance as the seemingly despicable protagonist, Joong-ho. A man whose motivations initially lie solely in recouping lost revenue. As he bonds with the daughter of the latest girl to disappear, however, Joong-ho slowly transforms into a man who desperately wants to save the missing girl, before it's too late. A man who's willing to…

When it comes to thrillers, no film industry around the world has done even half as impressive a job as Cinema of South Korea has since the dawn of this new millennium. Inspired from a real-life Korean serial killer case file, The Chaser tells the story of an ex-detective turned pimp whose girls have been disappearing lately without clearing their debts, leading to financial losses in his business. While tracking back, he finds out that all girls had vanished after meeting the same client whom one of his girls is meeting right now & decides to find him before it's too late, not knowing that the client he is dealing with is a sadistic psychopath.

For a film that presents such…

Brutal, bitter and uncompromising. The Chaser is South Korean thriller cinema with a dark atmosphere that breaks with some of the conventions of the serial killer genre. Above all, how the film tells its story, but also the figure drawings of the pro and antagonist differ significantly from the usual norm.

In the middle part there is one or the other length and you sometimes ask yourself where the film is actually going now, but you can get over that, especially since you are then rewarded with a really exciting and intense finale that leaves you shocked.

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Brutal, bitter und kompromisslos. The Chaser ist südkoreanisches Thriller-Kino mit einer düsteren Atmosphäre, dass mit einigen Konventionen des Serienmördergenres bricht. Vor Allem…

52 Years in 52 Weeks
2020 First Time Watches Ranked

"I made a mistake, so I should make up for it."

The Chaser is a feature-length reminder that you don't need insane twists or overcomplicated devices to throttle audiences. It's proof that, in the right hands, all you need is the right story and the means to tell it. Chaser's a thoroughly kinetic, furious thriller that embodies the very essence of white-knuckle filmmaking by relying on just that: a story that serves as the foundation for a seat-gripping viewing experience. Na Hong-jin's direction is superb (not surprising given that he also helmed the excellent The Wailing) and Kim Sun-min's sharp editing is easily the best I've seen so far this…

The first thing that struck me about THE CHASER was how much I loved Song Kang-Ho as an actor. Sometimes the acting style in Asian cinema can be unnecessarily exaggerated or unbelievable, but this guy is so natural and likable (even as a "guardian"), and had me immediately invested in his struggle. The second thing that struck me was that I had the wrong guy. This guy was not from THIRST or MR VENGEANCE... this guy's name is Kim Yoon-seok and I've never seen him before. But I think the important thing is that he is awesome, and the next movie I seek out from South Korea will be THE YELLOW SEA. Oops.

OK, next thing: I love the choice…

Korean Collection #39:

The Chaser (추격자)
By Na Hong-jin

The Chaser is the best Korean thriller ever made. But at the same time, this movie is one of the most absolutely devastating works ever made.

South Korea is the best at making movies that surpass and subvert expectations and are masters at genre-bending. They also know how to make a movie great yet literally unbearable to watch In a weird way, The Chaser is the living epitome of that.

This film is really not a thriller, rather an allegory on understanding the messed-up-ness of judicial systems Surprisingly, this film has some clever and really cryptic humor that surprisingly makes this film even more unbearable.

Man, I think this is the…

I swear no one makes thrillers quite like South Koreans. They've also got the market cornered on movies about serial killers. Oh, and movies about revenge, preferably ones that prominently feature a hammer as the blunt instrument of choice. "The Chaser" is a film that combines all these things in a beautifully operatic package that's somehow even bleaker and more punishing than most. In true South Korean fashion, it's also absurdly funny in a way that a film dealing in such heavy material really has no right to be. The recurring bit with the shit thrower is a particular highlight. The film was the directorial debut of Na Hong-jin, who also co-wrote its screenplay. It involves an ex-detective turned pimp…