The Chaser (2009)

★★★★
The Chaser starts out as a routine thriller featuring a former cop, now a pimp, who uses his skills to track down a serial killer. It morphs into something more emotional, more raw, and takes twists that are devastating in their impact. The end is an outburst of pure anger, featuring a man driven to rage, gradually realizing the threat in front of him and the extent to which that threat has manifested itself. When it is over, the cop is exhausted, as are we. The story takes a toll on everyone.

Eom Joong-ho (Kim Yoon-seok) runs a pimp business with several ladies in his employ. He has a loyal assistant, Oh-jot (Koo Bon-woong). We learn little of is background and nothing of his decision to leave police work to enter his new field. Several of his prostitutes have gone missing. He continues with his business, not yet realizing the danger. He receives a call and sends Kim Mi-jin (Seo Young-hee) to meet the client. Wary of recent events, Joong-ho instructs her to text him the address so that he can keep tabs on her. She has a daughter, Eun-ji (Kim Yoo-jung), who stays at home. Eun-ji is used to this routine. Mi-jin arrives at the residence, where she attempts to send the text but cannot. Joong-ho doesn’t hear from her and attempts to call, getting only a message saying she’s unreachable. Initially, the idea of losing one of his ladies to an unknown fate is troublesome, but he is first and foremost a businessman and motivated to keep his revenue stream intact.

Joong-ho searches the neighborhood where he suspects the client lives, but without a clue where to go, he’s just hoping to stumble onto something. He eventually does. His car runs into the one driven by Je Yeong-min (Ha Jung-woo), whose bloody shirt is the smoking gun. The cops arrive and take both into custody, though Joong-ho’s law enforcement background gives him the benefit of the doubt. Yeong-min is a cold and calculating serial killer, who immediately confesses his crimes but misleads the cops enough to make his testimony unreliable. He admits to killing nine, but then changes his body count to twelve. There is no evidence. He claims he can’t remember his address. He employs mind games to keep his captors off balance. An interview with a police psychologist manages to break through, explaining why a chisel is Yeong-min’s weapon of choice.

Joong-ho is convinced Mi-jin is still alive somewhere. He and Oh-jot return to search the neighborhood. Elsewhere in the city, an attack on a politician is an embarrassment to the police, who are now desperate to get the media to shift its focus. Capturing a serial killer would get the job done, but the police have limited time to hold Yeong-min before he must be released due to lack of evidence. The police chief is fanatical, even going so far as to ordering his men to make something up to justify pinning the crimes on Yeong-min, who calmly sends everyone around him into fits of frenzy. How actor Ha Jung-woo manages to craft such a ruthless persona is remarkable. He has no big dramatic scenes, and he often carries himself in an unassuming manner, but what he does possess is a quiet intensity, which he uses to deliver his lines in a very direct manner. Talk to him long enough and he’ll drive you crazy. Only once does he meet his match (the psychologist), but even then, it’s a temporary setback. He gathers his senses afterwards, as if the whole exchange never happened.

Opposite from him is Kim Yoon-seok, who plays Joong-ho as a man becoming more and more desperate as the clock ticks away. His attitude changes from a pimp trying to reacquire his employee to a man forever wounded by the worst criminal he has likely ever encountered. He searches Mi-jin’s apartment and finds Eun-ji. He takes her along. Her presence doesn’t really soften him up so much as it reminds him of his former profession. He used to help people. There’s a natural order to things. A child needs her mother, and it’s now his job to see to it that they are reunited. Yeong-min frustrates him though. One last clue might provide Yeong-mins whereabouts. The former cop reminded me of Nicolas Cage at the end of 8MM. He started out that movie as a private investigator who conducted himself in a professional manner. As the story played out, he was exposed to unspeakable imagery and those who peddled it. By the end he cried out to be saved. There is an image in this movie, of a fish tank, that pours the last ounce of fuel on the fire. It leads to a confrontation, and it illustrates what these two men think of each other.

The Chaser hits hard. It’s a brutal tale, but it is also extremely well made. Director Na Hong-jin, who shared writing duties with Shinho Lee and Hong Won-chan, utilizes the nighttime streets of the Mangwon neighborhood not just as a place to stage the action but as an additional obstacle. There’s not one but two foot chases. This residential district was built on hills and steep inclines and features maze-like alleys. The participants run up and down stairs that drain them of energy, leaving them out of breath by the end. The story plays like that. It is quite an experience. South Korean cinema has been producing some exceptional movies as of late, with Oldboy being another standout story. Hollywood has been growing more and more tiresome over the last six years with no end in sight, so if there are more treasures to discover from the other side of the Pacific, then I’ll do my deep dive there to find more.

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