The Chaser

Director: Na Hong-jin

2008 / 125min / 35mm

Drawing inspiration from the gristly exploits of South Korean serial killer Yoo Young-chul, Na’s astonishingly assured directorial debut stars Ha Jung-woo as a sadistic killer, Ji Yeong-min, and Kim Yoon-seok as Joong-ho, an ex-detective with a checkered past now running a prostitution ring. After helplessly watching his stable of employees disappear and dwindle, Joong-ho sets out to find the sicko responsible—and in the course of a sleepless night of cat and mouse, finds he has to contend not only with the killer’s calculating intelligence and red herring misleads, but with an incompetent police force and a thicket of bureaucratic barriers that seem to have been erected with the specific purpose of allowing the guilty to get away clean. Winner of Best Actor, Best Film, and Best Director at Korea’s Grand Bell Awards, The Chaser is both a precision-tuned white-knuckle thriller and an agonized exploration of insoluble moral conundrums.

Distributor: IFC Films

Part of This Night Has Opened My Eyes