2008 can be regarded as the year of "The Chaser". With his feature film debut, Luo Hongzhen won all three awards in Korea (Dae Bell Award, Baeksang Arts Award, Blue Dragon Award), especially It won six yuan in the selection of the Big Bell Award, which included the three most important awards: Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor. This small-budget work set the record for the fastest Korean thriller to reach one million viewers at the time, and was purchased by Warner for $1 million for the remake copyright before it was officially released. It can be said that before 2008, the top of the Korean film pyramid was the eternal "North-South theme", but when "The Chaser" came out, everyone on the road in Chungmu thought of a crime thriller addiction.
In my previous review of "Yellow Sea" (see "Yellow Sea": Bats and Mad Dogs ), I mentioned that the film is called "Chasers 2" because of director Luo Hongzhen and the two leading actors Ha Jung-woo , Kim Yoon-shik had their first collaboration in "The Chaser" two years ago, and the two works have similarities in many aspects. Of course, compared with the epic "Yellow Sea", "The Chaser" may be slightly inferior in terms of layout, but it is not much less in terms of plot density and urgency, and at the same time can clearly see the clues of Roche's style. .
Similar to the conception process of "The Yellow Sea", "The Chaser" is also the product of the combination of Luo Hongzhen's own inspiration and real events. The director saw a young girl walking slowly into a deserted street when he was returning at night, which prompted him to wonder: If the woman later disappeared without leaving any evidence or witnesses, could she still be captured? find it? In 2003, a revenge social perverted murderer named Yoo Yong-chul appeared in South Korea. He killed 19 old people and prostitutes with a hammer within a year, causing a national shock. The two merged together, and the outline of the story of "The Chaser" emerged.
"The Chaser" can trigger a movie viewing craze, which is inseparable from Luo Hongzhen's skilled narrative language. If nothing else, the beginning of the film is quite fascinating. On the streets of Seoul, full of neon lights and a lot of traffic, a young woman drove a car to pick up a man on the way, and then drove all the way into a dark and winding alley. After the two got off the car, they walked into a house not far away. Then the shots are superimposed, and the same scene changes from night to day, with the woman's car still parked, but covered with leaves and advertisements. The director uses the stillness of space to contrast the passage of time, without any prompts, and the suspense is instantaneous. Until a close-up of a male face is cut, the image of the male lead comes into view, and then the title of the film is hit just right, accompanied by a rush of drums. Through these few paragraphs, the audience has been brought into the atmosphere set by the film, which is both concise and unique.
Looking closely at Luo Hongzhen's style, there is a side to comparing textbooks. For example, "The Chaser" and "The Yellow Sea" have quite a few action elements, direct and brutal scenes of bloody violence, and extensive use of hand-held photography and montage editing, making the whole film realistic and fast-paced. These are almost all crimes. What a commercial thriller movie needs to have. There are also multi-threaded narratives. Although there are not as many as five or six story lines in "Yellow Sea", "The Chaser" also has two clues that go hand in hand, and the distinction between the main and sub-lines is not large. The tension of the film becomes more and more prominent.
What is fascinating about Roche's thriller, however, is its anti-genre, anti-climax. For example, there is no absolute justice and evil in his films, and it is difficult to simply define good and bad. Just as Jin Jiunan in "The Yellow Sea" seems to be a wronged and pitiful victim, but he also commits murder for money, the former policeman Yan Haomin in "The Chaser" is in hot pursuit of the perverted murderer, but what he does also It belongs to a shameful business, and his language is vulgar, and he often beats and scolds others. As a fanboy of the Coen brothers, Luo Hongzhen's subversive handling of traditional good and evil has won the samadhi.
Another example is that Luo Hongzhen likes to reveal the identity of the prisoner from the very beginning, as is the case in "The Chaser", "The Yellow Sea", and later "The Cry". "The Chaser" even arrests the murderer Chi Yingmin in the first half of the film. Although Hitchcock's "bomb theory" is well known to the world, not everyone can play this game. Without the process of "finding the culprit" like other crime films, "The Chaser" has to solve the problems of "how to make Ji Yingmin confess his guilt" and "how to escape the kidnapped Kim Mi-jin". While blazing new trails, it also draws a clear line with the "Memories of Murder"-style criminal suspense.
The anti-climax of the film is also a subversion of tradition. Yan Haomin, who escaped from the police car, continued to search for Jin Meizhen's whereabouts anxiously; Jin Meizhen, who had gone through hardships and cut the rope, finally escaped from the cage and ran to a nearby grocery store for help; Chi Yingmin, who was released, also returned to her residence at this time. Just happened to walk into the same grocery store to buy cigarettes. Luo Hongzhen used a parallel montage to show the actions of these three people, but audiences who are used to watching Hollywood "Last Minute Rescue" did not wait for the expected result. Yan Haomin missed the call from Jin Meizhen, and the police who received the report were late. The aunt at the grocery store dug her own grave and mistook Chi Yingmin as a savior. The embers of despair rekindled after a brief silence, and the hammer in the hands of the murderer smashed the last glimmer of hope in the film.
Of course, if there is only a good-looking appearance of technique, but lacks a certain depth, then "The Chaser" will not be so praised. Thanks to the loose film environment in South Korea, criticizing ZF and criticizing society has always been the political correctness of Chungmuro. As soon as the film came up, it showed a gorgeous and dark Seoul, which set the tone for the whole film. In the later story, Luo Hongzhen specially arranged an episode where the mayor of Seoul was thrown feces in the market. As a result, the police put most of their energy on the mayor, and instead focused on the murder of Chi Yingmin. The trial was delayed again and again, and even finally released, and the life and death of Jin Meizhen, who represented the disadvantaged group at the bottom, were insignificant in their eyes, and many decisions and disposal methods were amateurish and incompetent.
In fact, this is a very real self-portrait of Korean society. Since the beginning of the new century, there have been many tragic serial murder cases in South Korea (including the Yoo Yong-chul incident as the prototype of this film), but the Korean society's handling of these incidents has been very indifferent. Gotta be clean. In a society that focuses on personal interests, people rarely care about who the victim is and how much society has done to help them. In the end, Yan Haomin was the only one who had been fighting from beginning to end, a marginalized person who resigned to become a pimp because he couldn't stand the corruption of the police.
Is he a hero? Maybe, but does relying on such a hero further reflect the ruthlessness of Korean society and the incompetence of ZF? Yan Haomin caught the murderer and went to the ward to visit Meizhen's daughter, holding the child's small hand and leaning against the wall weakly. The camera slowly zooms in until the tall buildings and lights outside the window take over the entire picture. The film begins with darkness and ends with darkness, forming a circular closed loop, which clearly symbolizes an evil cycle. In this dark city, I do not know how many invisible dangers and sufferings are hidden.
♑
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