An ex-detective turned pimp tries to track down his missing girls who, despite all evidence to the contrary, he believes have merely run off. Turns out, there's a creep involved, and then the chasing begins.
The Good: Taken individually, there are some interesting and well done scenes. There are moments in the direction and story-telling where I can see why people really like the film. Also, despite our hero basically being a total jerk, the performance is able to humanize him, making us truly end up on his side.
The Bad: The plot holes and sheer stupidity of the characters ruined this movie for me. Usually I'm pretty good at turning my brain off and just enjoying the ride, but The Chaser pushed me over my limit. Your story has serious problems when you rely on multiple people being idiots in order to get your characters out of sticky situations. Once is annoying, but it was almost a motif. For me, this killed any suspense they were trying to build, which then destroyed the pacing because I was sitting there going "There is no way this should possibly be happening" instead of focusing on the actual story.
The Ugly: The utterly pointless murder near the end, that happens only due to a long sequence of the aforementioned stupidity. You can claim that it makes this movie gritty, or brutal. To me, it's just the director giving a big middle finger to the audience.
Points Pondered
-Although this one takes it to an entirely different level, pretty much every Korean movie I've seen has totally incompetent cops. Is this just in film, or are they really that bad?
-There's absolutely nothing about the bad guy that convinces me he wouldn't get caught within an hour of his first crime.
-If my houseguest drew a creepy, four-walls-and-floor mural in two days, I might ask him to leave.
-This movie just proves that if you're sick, you shouldn't go to work. It's for your health, as well as the health of others.
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