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Glory to the Filmmaker!
I’m a little at a loss to explain the sleeper-hit success of Korean crime thriller The Chaser. The sleeper part makes perfect sense, the film coming from a no-name director and a small production company with no big name stars; it’s the massive success that I find baffling. While certainly no slouch, The Chaser is a significant step back from most of its local counterparts in several key areas. The shooting style is fairly bland, action often poorly staged and the characters a little flat. That said, its inversion of the normal cop thriller motifs combined with its bluntly matter of fact staging of brutal violence give this thing some real kick. The strengths of The Chaser are obvious and the flaws also apparent enough that this is one case where the already announced English language remake actually stands a significant chance of improving on the original.
The debut feature from award winning short film director Na Hong-Jin, The Chaser tells the story of Jung-Ho, a former cop turned pimp. Think for a moment about what sort of cop would choose to become a pimp in his post-law enforcement career and you have an immediate grasp of Jung-Ho. He is a surly, foul tempered, hard talking man driven by the pursuit of easy profits. And Jung-Ho is in a bad mood because a number of his girls - girls who he effectively owns, having bought out their bad debts - have recently gone missing. Jung-Ho believes a rival pimp is simply stealing his girls and reselling them for profit but the truth is far worse. There is a serial killer on the prowl, one that has not been detected because he preys exclusively on call girls hired from a variety of escort agencies.
When the call comes in for a girl one night Jung-Ho realizes, too late, that the client’s phone number matches the number used to book sessions with a pair of his missing girls and he rushes off to protect his investment. The rival must be captured and taken out of the picture. But while a chance encounter leads Jung-Ho to the correct man, his girl Mi-Jin is nowhere to be found, and the client - Young-min - spouting nonsense about having killed a dozen women. It’s enough to bring Young-Min to the police but the killer is smart enough to give them only enough to taunt but not enough to actually charge him or even hold him for an extended period of time. And so the chase is on. It is not a chase to find the killer - he has already been found - it is a chase to find the girl. It they can’t find her - or other significant evidence - within twelve hours Young-Min must be set free.
It’s this basic inversion that makes The Chaser go. We’re not trying to catch a criminal, we’ve already got him. What needs to be done is to keep him, the audience knowing perfectly well that his intended victim is lying bound and badly beaten but still alive where Young-Min left her and that her life will surely end if Young-Min is freed. Watching this realization slowly dawn on Jung-Ho as he gets to know Mi-Jin’s daughter and understand that the little girl will soon be an orphan because he sent her mother into danger and failed to protect her properly gives the film an emotional edge that slowly builds to hysteria as time winds down and the police prove - as they so often do in Korean films - generally incompetent.
It’s not hard to see that The Chaser is built on one - if you’ll pardon the bad pun - killer premise. It gives the audience just enough of what they expect from a crime drama to hook them in and give them a sense of things while also injecting a fairly tired genre with a bolt of new energy by simply shifting perspectives on the familiar scenario. Director Na’s great realization in this is understanding that this shift gives the story the kick it needs all on its own and that he doesn’t need to gloss things up. Na chooses, therefore, to present the darker, more violent aspects of the story in a cold blooded, totally matter of fact style that makes them all the more shocking for having been played straight rather than over stylized. But Na also shows a pair of significant weaknesses. First, as is often the case with young directors, he draws only middling performances from his leads, neither of whom have a great deal of natural charisma. And second, there is a line between playing the action blunt and playing the action clumsy and there are definitely moments where Na finds himself on the wrong side of that line.
The Chaser, in the end, is a good film but not a great one, one whose premise outstrips its execution. Why it was targeted for remake is obvious in the extreme and I am more than a little bit curious to see what happens to it when reworked. There is very little that is culturally specific in the film - always the biggest single obstacle - and in the hands of a good team this could well be one of those cases where the remake outstrips the original. And yes, the team here is a good one - the US version reunites William Monahan, Roy Lee and Leonardo DiCaprio, the team that last worked together on The Departed.
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Reader Comments
cpa314 03/30/2008 @ 1:21am
With their movie industry in a nasty nasty slump, Korea needs more box office hits like this. Wonder why it was such a hit though. It didn’t have huge stars, a big budget, or extremely blatant nationalistic propaganda( like in D-war)
ilikemarmite 03/30/2008 @ 4:02am
This is on my to see list, think I’ll just rent it instead of going out to buy it.
axleu 03/30/2008 @ 6:21am
The departed sucked big time, IMHO.
“The strengths of The Chaser are obvious and the flaws also apparent enough that this is one case where the already announced English language remake actually stands a significant chance of improving on the original.”
Funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.
ilikemarmite 03/30/2008 @ 6:27am
The Departed was an excellent remake, and I am a big fan of the original but kudos where it is deserved.
And why was what he said funny?
Todd Brown 03/30/2008 @ 1:25pm
Ditto. There’s certainly no humor intended. Have you not ever watched a film that had a great premise but walked out of it thinking that it could benefit from a do-over? That it got close but never fully tapped into its potential? That’s The Chaser for me.
I’m not saying that the remake will be better. I’m not suggesting that redoing it in English will be any sort of guarantee of success. What I am saying is that the strengths are so obvious, and the places it could be improved also so obvious, that in more experienced hands than Na’s - regardless of nationality - this same material could make a much stronger film, that the materials from a good film could (and should, I’d say) be reshaped into a great one.
You know what this anti remake knee jerk reaction reminds me of? It reminds me of the rock kids in high school who had a favorite band that they thought was the best thing ever, the best band ever to walk the face of the earth, until the day that very same band got played on mainstream radio and (gasp!) broke into the top 40. Then they sucked and were sell outs and those original hipster fans walked away, searching for the next obscure band that they would love purely because they were obscure. I always want to see the original versions of films, I always want to see the directors’ original vision for things, but to begrudge that same material international success or presume that nobody else could possibly do that same material justice is both deliberately ignorant of history and just plain foolish.
quadshock 03/30/2008 @ 3:01pm
that was a good post Todd.
(though on another topic, bands do tend to suck more when they try to appeal to the mainstream)
ilikemarmite 03/30/2008 @ 3:04pm
True quadshock, if a band change their sound to appeal to a wider audience I can understand people being upset, but if they get famous with the same sound and don’t change anything and people still get upset then that is lame.
But back on topic, I must admit I don’t like too many remakes, especially Asian remakes, not because I am that guy, but because a lot to suck, especially with Asian films as they are so good at building things up slowly and with good atmosphere and the American remakes take that away a bit I feel because they feel a mainstream audicence will get a bit bored.
But The Departed was good, and it also had it’s own identity too in a good way, if you see what I mean.
Todd Brown 03/30/2008 @ 3:14pm
I totally agree that a lot of remakes tend to suck and that there is always a risk of losing what made the original so compelling. That said, most films tend to suck, period, regardless of whether they are remakes or totally original. It’s bloody hard to make a good film. And I honestly doubt that the ratio of good:bad remakes is any worse than the ratio of good:bad original material.
Every film should be judged on its own merits. Is this one film a good film, does it accomplish what it sets out to do. If it accomplishes its goals then just enjoy it for what it is ...
ChevalierAguila 04/01/2008 @ 7:45am
“most films tend to suck, period, regardless of whether they are remakes or totally original. It’s bloody hard to make a good film. And I honestly doubt that the ratio of good:bad remakes is any worse than the ratio of good:bad original material.”
Agree there.
Oh yeah, i stumbled (sp?) with The Departed on tv not so long ago, bored the hell out of me.
mao365 12/12/2008 @ 2:51am
I think the review sort of missed it. The direction in terms of visual style as well as performances were amazing. The cross-cutting and hand-held shots added to urgency of the story.
The story is magnificent precisely because it follows the least likely protagonist, a former detective who was kicked out of the force for taking bribes and is now a despicable pimp. This pimp, whom his girls call Human Trash, is moved to act after some of his call girls go missing. At first he thinks some lowlife out there is abducting his girls and selling them to another human trafficker. Gradually, it dawns on him that a serial killer is killing them. Meanwhile, in the background, the police are also conducting an investigation to try to catch this killer.
Of course, this description doesn’t do the film justice. THE CHASER is the best kind of thriller. In addition to social commentary about various aspects of modern life, it is masterfully-crafted and executed.
What do I mean by this? As is usually the case with the best storytelling, the film places the viewer in the exact place and viewpoint of the protagonist, whose single-minded pursuit of the villain is hampered by the bungling of the very police who banished him from their midst. The film puts the viewer through all the emotions that the protagonist goes through. If you watch this film and do not find it emotionally draining, then it’s time to go get a check-up because something is kaputt.
This film has its share of violence and blood, but it is not your conventional whodunnit. The killer, one of the most chilling serial killers in film histroy, is revealed very early on (in the first 20 minutes) to the audience, and soon afterwards, to the police. What follows is what grips the audience. Simply put, THE CHASER is a film that sinks its teeth into the viewer from the start and doesn’t let go. It’s packed with tension. Were it a book, it’d be the best page-turner. Its depiction of the serial killer is truly chilling.
Depicting the journey of a fallen man who comes to grips with pure evil, it is an intelligent film for adults but also wholly accessible and entertaining.
The above review makes this film sound as if it’s a good second-tier from South Korea. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Maybe it’s the subtitles on the print he saw or whatnot, but the film works in more ways than simply because of its structure or “gimmick” of having the identity of the killer revealed to the audience, the protagonist, and the police 30 minutes in.
It works because it shows the journey and transformation of a fallen and rather despicable man as he gradually tries to do some good in the world. It’s one of the best films to come out of South Korea in the past 10 years.
To dismiss it as gimmicky and an inexplicable hit by a lucky first-time director doesn’t do the film or the director justice. Director Na deserves all the credit for making a remarkable haunting film.