Three of his girls have already disappeared, but when pimp and former
cop Jun-ho (Kim Yun-seok) figures out that one of his regulars, Young-min
(Ha Jung-woo) must be behind the disappearances, he has already sent a
fourth girl, Mi-jin (Seo Yeong-hie), to her place ... thing is of course,
Jun-ho has no idea where Young-min's place actually is, and he now plans
to use Mi-jin as bait to get to him and make him return his girls, which
Jun-ho thinks he has sold into slavery. But Young-min hasn't sold them
into slavery at all, he has tortured and killed them, as he is a dangerous
maniac who kills women to make up for his impotency. Eventually, and
rather by accident, Jun-ho gets his hands on Young-min, brutally beats him
up and then takes him to the next precinct for questioning - where
Young-min quickly confesses the murders, but doesn't give a clue about his
address ... which is especially critical since he claims that Mi-jin is
still alive. And while Jun-ho chases across town to save the girl -
temporarily lumbered with Mi-jin's young daughter he didn't even know
about - Young-min plays his little games with the cops holding him, and
eventuallyeven manages to get released with the prosecutor's help - and
what's more, he gets Jun-ho arrested for beating him up. And only thanks
to his friends from the police does Jun-ho manage to escape, and still he
does everything in his power to save Mi-jin. Mi-jin though has in the
meantime freed herself and found shelter at a store near Young-min's place
- and it's there where she is tracked down and killed by Young-min, only
minutes before the police she has already called arrives. With Mi-jin
dead, tracking down and punishing Young-min has gotten personal to Jun-ho,
and he uses everything he has learned at the police force to track him
down, and this time he actually succeeds, and soon enough the two men are
engaged in a battle of life and death, which Jun-ho is about to win - when
the police arrives just in time to prevent him from killing the killer.
Jun-ho has won, but the victory feels hollow ...
Ok thriller
that moves fast enough to keep one entertained without drowning everything
in fashinable excessive editing. Still the pace of the movie can't totally
obscure its narrative flaws, like leaving too big a part of the plot to
coincidence, leaving several characters (most notably the killer
Young-min) weirdly underdeveloped or dropping interesting subplots rather
deliberately. Still, if nothing else, The Chaser is at least ok
entertainment that's certainly no masterpiece but certainly no
embarrassement neither.
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