Gumshoed Seoul

추격자 Chu-gyeok-ja (The Chaser) 2008 South Korea (125 minutes) directed and cowritten by Na Hong-jin.

This is a satisfying, fast-paced, hard-hitting, contemporary film noir from South Korea. The omniscient viewer looks on like a bemused god, knowing everything except what result the interplay of human folly and fortune will produce.

Eom Joong-ho (Kim Yook-seok), fired from the police force for unethical conduct, runs call girls from a small office in a candy-colored neon-bright part of Seoul with a faithful but hapless associate he calls ‘Meathead’—Oh-jot (Koo Bon-woong).

Joong-ho keeps in touch with old police colleagues and it becomes clear from their banter that though his firing probably was justified, his colleagues and higher-ups engage in similar activities as a matter of course. Joong-ho fell afoul of the system because he did not play the game.

His problem now is that he borrowed money to advance to several of his call girls whose serial disappearance puts him in a hole. He first suspects that they ran off with his money or are working with another pimp. Joong-ho notices that each went to a client with the same cell phone number who met the women in a public place and took them back to his house.

Police then call Joong-ho to report that his Jaguar, in which he sent one employee on a job, is parked improperly on a street in the Seoul district Mangwon collecting sex trade flyers and evidently abandoned. Another pimp has a similar problem—and a client with the identical cell phone number.

The more reliable Kim Min-ji (Seo Yeong-hee), a call girl sent to the same cell phone user-client with instructions to text Joong-ho the client’s address, also disappears in Mangwon. Joong-ho senses that there may be a darker game going on.

He tries to get help from his friends on the force, but they are detailed to provide security for the South Korean president who makes a surprise visit to a covered food market. A lone protester who splatters the president with feces becomes the focus of police operations citywide.

Then, driving around Mangwon, Joong-ho literally runs into his quarry. The viewer already knows that Ji Yeong-min (Ha Jeong-woo) is the serial killer, handy with a hammer and chisel. Joong-ho caused the fender bender; he is surprised when the driver of the other car wants only to get away quickly from the scene. Then he notices blood on Yeong-min’s shirt and, when he keys the mystery number on his cell phone, Yeong-min’s telephone rings. 

He catches Yeong-min after a foot chase, but this is just the beginning. The problem becomes how to link Yeong-min to the missing women, where the missing women are, and whether they still are alive. 

There is a lot of rain, hard rain. The rain reflects the pessimistic atmosphere and underscores the futility of what those working under it are trying to accomplish—such as police sent much later to search outside at night in a wooded park for traces of the serial killer and his victims as the rain beats down on them.

What makes this a classic noir tale is that a disgraced policeman who plays by his own rules does the detective grunt work that a large, well-trained police force appears powerless to do. The police are so caught up in their own politics, procedures, deference to higher-ups and the way things look, that they barely can get out of their own way: far too many police usually turn up way too late. The steady focus on this deeper kind of corruption and its Keystone Kops effect would make a social or political comment.

Joong-ho’s former colleagues help him when they can—and he can handle suspects in ways they cannot—and should not. They know and trust Joong-ho, but the story comes down to this ‘chaser,’ on his own, tagging along Meathead and Eun-ji (Kim Yoo-jeong), Min-ji’s five-year-old daughter, racing against time to find Min-ji alive—if they can.