So... everytime I end watching a movie, I start a review on it. This one is a tough one. A rollercoaster of emotions... but one thing is assured: it's a good movie.With its 125 minutes lenght time, you might think it's way too stale, and yes, I also think this movie could have been a bit shorter. On the other hand, so many detail is put into it that it leaves me doubting if 125 minutes was even enough!I see this movie as a drama thriller. I can't describe it as a crime, or police movie, something like that, since it's not about the technical aspects of the investigation, but rather its emotional aspects.Yoon-Seok Kim's emotional development throughout the flick is captivating. At first, you don't like him, but as you see him "learning", your feelings towards him surely will change. In the end, you're pretty much feeling what he feels. One thing I think is funny is how they treat South Korean cops on each South Korean movie. It's like with American cops and doughnuts. It's kinda funny.Overall, great movie. Not for every one, since it's a low budget movie and it has that distinct South Korean design.

This movie is simply ridiculous, then nothing in it is believable, unless in South Korea everybody is just plain stupid.It's about police officers behaving like children, doing nothing right and yelling at each other all the time. The only likable character is the victim, who happens to be stupid as well. She gets severely beaten in the head with a big hammer, and yet she miraculously survives, escapes and... gets killed with a hammer.And it's about a very unlikable protagonist, who beats the sh*t out of a serial killer, who every time stands up and walks as if nothing happened.Lot's of violence and blood. And nothing else.

Well not sure how I can start this,but 1st of all this movie is based on one of South Koreas most notorious Serial Killers by the name of "Yoo Young-Chul" He killed mostly rich men and Korean Prostitutes. He also admitted to eating some of the victims. He went on a killing spree from 2003 to 2004. Anyway well I was stationed in South Korea from 2007 to 2014.After I transitioned out of the Army in 2011 I decided I was going to stay in Korea as a civilian. I was young,had no money and honestly did not know what I was doing.I had a korean gf at that time and she was pretty much taking care of me. I started to feel bad for her because she got involved in some shady work just so she could support the both of us. I started feeling bad for her,because I could not support her and I didn't want her to do what she was doing any longer. So I conspired to import some drugs into Korea with a friend of my. "I seen some guys sell weed in Korea and they were selling it for 10times the amount in Korea then they would usually sell in the states. So my friend and I thought we could make easy money as well. Long story short my friend bought some stuff it got caught by Korea's Customs Officials and he was arrested. But the Koren Police and Prosecutors offered him a deal.Basically if he helped them to catch others they would let him go with a period of probation. So he set me up, I was arrested publicly at a Dunkin Donuts in Hongdae(Hongdae is a famous University Area in Korea where lots of University Students and Foreigners go drink and party) I was sent to a prison in Uijeongbu.After a few months I had my first trial and the Judge Sentenced me to 4 years in Jail,I quickly filed for an appeal and was transferred to 서울 구지성(Seoul Prison)My gf at the time still worked at a 텐프로(High End Escort) and she was making around 30K a month doing that job,so within a month she saved enough money to buy me a lawyer. The 2nd trail was around 4 months away. When I was in Seoul Prison,thats where I met the Notorious "Yoo Young Chul" The Serial Killer that this movie is roughly based on. He was in the "FOREIGNERS BLOCK" of the jail,because the guards wanted to segregate him from the Koreans. Well some of us foreigners that lived in Korea heard about him while we lived there and we couldn't believe that he was there,3 doors down from our room. So of course we talked to him and asked questions.The man was a genius,with an exceptionally high IQ (I believe he was like a Korean Ted Bundy. He was artistic and a very skillful person at being able to draw. He was able to carry regular conversations as if nothing was ever wrong with him. He had a passion for Travel and was obsessed with Japanese Culture and said that he frequently visited Japan. It was highly against the rules for us to communicate with him but we would always pass notes back and forth to find out the truth about him,and not what the media,movies,and other propaganda made him. I do not praise what he did at all but this movie definitely twisted the facts about him. Anyway if you guys have any questions feel free to ask me. This is all truth. I even have my prison documents and a few letters from him to prove that this experience I went through is real. O and by the way on my appeal I was granted probation because the judge found me not guilty of the actual crime because my friends at that time did admit that he ordered the drugs and admitted to trafficking the stuff. All I got was a conspiracy charge,I wasn't deported. I left Korea in March 2014 on my own and now live in Shenzhen China, Im planing to return to Korea in April of 2015

The Chaser is yet another example of the excellence of South Korean cinema. Since the millennium there have been several absolute standout movies from this country. Often what makes them so good is that they have materialised from a culture hitherto sparsely represented in the movies, meaning that we in the west often find their films less predictable than we are normally used to. The Chaser is quite a good example of this because what we have is a staple of the thriller genre – the serial killer film – presented in ways that go against expectations. Structurally, it's unusual in that not only is the killer's identity revealed very early on but he is also caught near the start. This means that the focus then switches to the police bureaucracy that hinders everything bar the maniac himself. But even with this switch of direction, the plot-line still retains a high suspense narrative whereby an abducted girl remains in the killer's lair, a place totally unknown the police.The story-line itself has an ex-policemen turned pimp apprehend a man whom he believes has kidnapped one of his girls. This man then confesses to police that has murdered this girl but without any direct proof he is set to be released in 12 hours by the powerless authorities, leading to frantic detective work. This story results in a cat and mouse standoff. But with a hero who is hardly whiter than white – he is after all a pimp who is distrusted by his former police colleagues; who themselves are shown to be fairly incompetent. So the dynamic between the characters is fairly complex and leads to some unpredictable results. The two main characters are especially good here and very well played by the actors. There is great use of the back streets of Seoul too. Especially in the case of some high octane foot chases which unusually show the sheer exhaustion of such an endeavour, equally the several frantic and messy fights have a similar realism. This approach is distinctive and adds a lot. The violence is often so realistic it offers little distance to the audience, particularly horrible is the hammer and chisel sequence which made for extremely grim viewing. This grit and grime adds a further dimension to a film which has already taken a genre film to unpredictable places. It ends in a way that is neither happily wrapped up not one dimensionally nihilistic, it's something in between. In a film of many contrasts and surprises, it feels right that it does so.