The Chaser (Na Hong-jin, 2008): South Korea

Reviewed by Tamara Mamukelashvili. Viewed at the AFI Filmfestival, Arclight, Los Angeles.

The film The Chaser Joong-ho is a dirty ex-detective, who now is a pimp. Who also has a financial problems as few of the girls has disappeared without clearing their debts to him. While he’s looking for the girls he finds a clue that vanished girls were called up by the same client that one of the girls is meeting with right now.

The film is very powerful, and has an interesting plot that highlights the name of the film itself. This film is very energetic, as we see Joong –ho running all the time, dealing with things, so most of the time, while watching a film, it keeps audience awake and aware of all the things that characters are going through.

One of the elements that made this film very dominant was the use of the music. Throughout the movie we hear music three or four times. The reason of this is to bring the right emotions to the audience. When there is a scene where something bad is about to happen music would always go louder and most of the time it was a fast pace, that helped to create the emotion and tense towards the audience.

One of the scenes that was very strong was when the little girl and Joong-ho are in the car, it’s raining, we see close up shots of the each character, it goes to slow emotion to emphasize the feeling of each character, also great use of contras in the scene, wee the young girl crying, close up shot of the girls face and on the other side man on the cell phone screaming. The idea of using these particular elements for this scene was to dramatize the scene and to bring emotions to audience.

The overall look of the film is very well and clearly done, has a meaning and interesting idea. Has elements that distinctly represents all the characters and the emotions that they are going through. Shows us the world they live in and how cruel life can be to innocent people.