2008 ‘추격자’ Directed by Na Hong-jin
Joong-ho is a dirty detective turned pimp in financial trouble as several of his girls have recently disappeared without clearing their debts. While trying to track them down, he finds a clue that the vanished girls were all called up by the same client whom one of his girls is meeting with right now.
Chugyeokja, The Chaser - Der Schlächter von Seoul, Bílé maso, Ο Κυνηγός, הרודף, Az üldöző, チェイサー, მდევარი, 추격자, Seklys, Chugyeogja, W Pogoni, O Caçador, Преследователь, โหด ดิบ ไล่ ล่า, Ölümcül Takip, Переслідувач, Kẻ Săn Đuổi, 追击者
South Korea18
UK18
USAPG-13
Hong Kong
Germany18
France12
Japan
Netherlands16
Greece
Netherlands16
France
Germany
Greece
Hong Kong
Japan
Netherlands
South Korea
UK
USA
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…
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…
Shoutout to highly disturbing Korean serial killer films.
Definitely one of my favorite genders.
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"The Chaser"? more like "The Presuctiaion"
It starts as a "find the killer" movie, but it quickly becomes a "prove that he is the killer" movie, which will turn some people off, but I loved every second of it. It's a well-crafted crime thriller with great directing and amazing editing, a thing that never gets praised.
Pulse pounding and exeediningly dark serial killer crime thriller jam opts for the police procedural route instead of just the usual revenge caper, and succeeds swimmingly with breakneck chases, unnerving violence, and moral ambiguity.
Totally grim and overwhelmingly engrossing, I've been thinking about The Chaser since the end credits stopped rolling last night... this is one hell of a twisty-turny, very unsettling ride. Equal parts Beautiful and Brutal. Suffocating.
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…
Asia-Weeks
letterboxd.com/yandico/list/dubfal-asia-week-3rd-round/">DuBFaL-Asia-Week
Hier haben wir es mit der typischen Mitternachtsentdeckung im Spätfernsehprogramm auf einen der „Zweit“-Kanäle“ wie SWR, WDR oder MDR zu tun.
Wann ich ihn sah, lässt sich auf die Uhrzeit herunterbrechen, mehr auch nicht. Doch wie es der Zufall so wollte, sah ich ihn zur selben Zeit getrennt von meinem Bruder an, um am nächsten Tag dem jeweils anderen von dieser Entdeckung zu berichten.
„The Chaser“ dürfte nach „Oldboy“ (was für ein Start in das Koreanischekino), mein zweiter Wow-Effekt gewesen sein, weil ich eben einen Thriller sah, der sich meinen damaligen Sehgewohnheiten völlig entzog, einerlei darum, weil er eben aus Asien stammt, anderseits trug die Story, eher die Herangehensweise, dazu bei.
Wo westliche Produktionen vornehmlich nach dem „Räuber…
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 and 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…
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…
