The Chaser review

I'm having some trouble with Korean cinema at the moment, at least when it comes to modern crime thrillers from said country. It's a problem of believability, something i believe any crime drama attempting realism or hard-nosedness MUST have in order to properly work.

The Chaser is a highly acclaimed film I had heard about from the Indie movie scene and it had been making its way across film festivals and such, and most of the geek and horror blogs (there's a bunch of them) fell in love with the film because of its gritty realism and unflinching violence.

Fuckballs, I say. I say fuckballs.

Not often do I actually get angry at a film, but I was so excited when the film finally made its DVD release that I snapped up the only copy and eagerly watched immediately. What follows is the most boneheadedly obvious "critique" on police ineptitude and some of the phoniest "grit" I've come across in a crime thriller.

We have a thoroughly unlikable p[rotagonist- he's an ex-cop, now a pimp with a problem. His girls seem to be going missing. He takes probably 40 minutes into the movie to do what should have taken 10 to track down who he suspects sold his girls, but when the cops get involved it turns out it may have been bloodier than that. However, there isn't enough evidence. It's now a race to find at least one mising girl before his 24-hour holding period is over and he is set free.

This setup is used to literally make the police look as stupid as possible as NOBODY makes a sane decision in the entire film. You know in horror films when the protagonist continues to make bone-headed decisions like splitting up in the dark woods or having sex in a tent next to the haunted lake? Yeah, imagine that, but in cop drama form. People fail to make basic arrests, interrogate properly, miss key clues, and generally run around with their heads in their ass. This can be used properly if you do it without being ham-fisted or put us in the same shoes as the police, but we as an audience have all the answers from the get-go. We see all the crimes and know all the clues. The film is literally designed to make me feel angry at the police force. Everybody is loud, corrupt, obnoxious, and possibly brain-damaged. The film is hectic, and not in a good way.

I dug the performance of the main villain, but it got one-note after the first half of the film. The film is also purposefully "dark," but it does this by using contrived coincidence after coincidence. I can't but for one second all the coincidences that drive this plot forward. It reminds me of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Chan-Wook Park's first film is his Revenge Trilogy, in that as an audience we are asked to believe a string of unbelievable circumstances to keep the plot moving. I thought it was generally accepted that this is bad storytelling, but apparently I've been told that it's something Korean thrillers often do, and you have to either accept it or stop watching them. Well, it appears I just don't have the taste for these types of films.

I did like Oldboy, however, which has some storytelling flaws, but the acting, atmosphere, and downright engaging plot structure keep it as one of the most brilliant films I've seen. Chaser just falls flat at every chance it gets to make it right. Apparently this is getting an American remake, as is Oldboy. I'm oddly looking forward to both, because in this case perhaps an American touch is what is needed for such a boneheaded Westerner like me.