South Korean police Thrillers are more prone to crossover into Horror because they’re not afraid to present detectives who are rubbish at their jobs. This leaves the killer a lot of room and time and opens the possibility that they will get away with their evil and still be out there, like a boogeyman. If you can handle the mishandling of Memories or Murder and the bleak cat-and-mouse of I Saw the Devil, than The Chaser was made for you. The story is easy to follow but difficult to describe since it goes into Spoiler territory almost right away. The story keeps making unexpected choices that avoid genre conventions. Some unexpected humor and a couple of tough scenes of cold-blooded brutality.
The police in The Chaser aren’t crack detectives going after a criminal mastermind. They’re regular people swept up in an extraordinary case. The cops don’t follow hunches that happen to break for them and clues don’t come from the furtherest reaches to land in their midst right when all hope seems lost. They follow every lead and wind up at a dead end. Meanwhile the clock is ticking on the killer’s next victim. As the night wears on they’re faced with an increasingly difficult choice. They can stay within the law and hope to get some evidence on this guy that will stick, though that’s looking less and less likely, or they can start bending and breaking regulations to save a woman’s life. Certainly if they find all the bodies in the end there’s no way a court will let this guy loose on the public.
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