The Chase (2017) — Kim Hong-Sun
Good although forgettable crime thriller.
When the day feels dull and I’m in the mood of unwinding from everything else, I often look for an entertaining Korean detective film to watch. They normally have plenty of thrill, and sometimes even some laughs, to keep me protected from my own thoughts. “The Chase” was something of the kind. It was fun. As it is with movies made by Kim Hong-Sun, the same man behind “Traffickers” (2012) and “The Con Artists” (2014).
An old grumpy landowner, Shim Deok-su (Baek Yoon-sik), is hated by all but one of his tenants, another old man, who happens to be murdered one day in a series of crimes that are taking place in his building. Turns out that this other old man used to be a detective, partnered by Park Pyung-dal (a great Sung Dong-il), an impulsive, unconsequential and funny and driven man whose sole goal is to find the culprit of the murders, which happen to be exactly like other sequential murders that happened years before. So the two men, the grumpy and the funny, start on a dangerous mission to solve these murders, in spite of everyone else’s opinion that they are nothing more than senile and lonely old men.
Linked to this plot, my bet is that stories surrounding generational issues will boom in the next few years, and this one is a start. It talks about how hard it is to live as a lonely senior in today’s modernity, when everything is changing too fast for anyone to even grasp. When you’re old, it’s as if you lose the very best things people saw on you as a young person. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t changed at all. In a highly competitive and technology-driven country such as South Korea this generational gap gets even deeper. This is a sharp and violent social critic to this age exclusion and appearance-oriented in Korean society.
But as much as I liked its social appeal, “The Chase” annoyed me with its attempt to be cultural relevant, with the insertion of ‘cool’ songs out of nowhere or the way it ended, which — no spoiler intended — is kind of sad and just simply flat and longing. The characters could be better developed and explored within the plot. The ending could’ve been shorter and better accomplished. The women characters are equal to non-existing. And what is more the detective genre is getting a bit predictable, with its last minute plot twists. It was good at the first Korean detective movies and it is entertaining and fun overall, but it’s starting to lack that creative element that made it so exciting at the beginning.
