CHASER

Korea, 2008, 125 minutes, Colour.

Kim Yoon-seok.

Directed by Na Hong-jin

A rather grim Korean crime thriller which has 129 Korean and Asian film awards.

This is a city setting the film, a focus on a former detective who now runs prostitutes and two of them have disappeared. He has a suspect and arranges for one of his women, ill, at home looking after her young daughter, to go to a rendezvous and supply him with information.

There are quite grim consequences, the suspects attack on the woman, leaving her for dead, his killing an old couple who come to make enquiries at his house, his attempting to get away and pursued by the former detective, a crash, and the beginning of quite a number of long running chases throughout the film.

The detective has friends in the police force but they have mixed feelings about him. In the meantime, the mayor has been attacked by a local on throwing faeces at him and the police are preoccupied with this occasion in the press.

After a brutal fight, the police arrest both the suspect and the detective – and the suspect then confessing to a whole range of killings but, not necessarily believed, and with no evidence against him, he is released.

Further grim complications, the injured woman comes to consciousness, is able to escape, takes refuge in a shop. In the meantime, the released suspect comes into the shop cigarettes and the owner asks him for help in case the murderer should come, and revealing that the woman is in the shop – and he kills them both.

As expected, there is a final confrontation between the two men, quite vicious, the police involved. But, a touch of happy ending with the detective moving away from managing the women and going to the bedside hospital of the dead woman’s young daughter.