The Chase, 2017
Sim Deok-soo (Yun-shik Baek) is a locksmith who is also a landlord of several buildings. He grumbles at his various tenants who are behind on their rent. But when one of his tenants is murdered and another, a young woman, is kidnapped, Deok-soo teams up with a former detective named Park (Dong-il Sung). Park tells Deok-soo about a serial killer from over 30 years ago who targeted the elderly and kidnapped a woman, and the two go on a hunt for the killer.
I thought that this film was okay, but not great. Its downfall for me largely had to do with the way that it tries to balance some very dark and disturbing thriller elements with comedy, often to mixed success.
Yun-shik Baek is pretty good in the lead role. He's gruff on the outside, but not a bad guy at heart. As one tenant notes, he fusses them but never actually kicks anyone out for not paying their rent. Probably the best aspect of the comedy element of the film is Deok-soo's indignance at the treatment of the elderly. In one funny sequence, police officers scoff at the idea of the serial killer having returned, noting that he would now be in his 60s. Deok-soo tells them off, remarking that the elderly are very capable . . . the unspoked part being "of murder".
One area of the film that it very hit or miss is its use of violence, which ranges from realistic and graphic to borderline cartoonish. In the same film, a man is painfully stabbed in the abdomen. And yet within 20 minutes of this, someone is hit on the head with a brick and it's played off as if it's no big deal. This goes back to my complaint about the film wanting to lean comedic one moment and serious the next. But it also makes it hard to tell what's happening in a scene. When a character is hit on the head with a piece of cement it's like "So are they getting up in a minute or are they dead?".
Another area where the comedy/thriller blend leads to come uncomfortable dynamics is in the treatment of its female characters. Without giving too much away, some really horrible things happen to women in this film. For various reasons, the women in this movie are denied much of a voice, and they are mainly used as motivators for the male characters. That's not an uncommon dynamic in a film like this, but the comedy/tragedy balance gets especially uncomfortable when you have slapstick and other kinds of humor surrounding the one sequence where a woman does get to express herself, and that involves talking about her abduction and implied sexual assault. It's all just a bit yikes.
Overall, though, this was a diverting film. It does hit some unfortunate notes, but ultimately it holds together okay.