Netflix Minute: The Chaser

Netflix Minute is a weekly feature highlighting a title from Netflix's catalog of instant view films. If you want to spend a night snuggled up with a bag of popcorn and don't want to drive to the video store, this is for you.

As a movie lover, much of my time is spent perusing various IMDB, Wikipedia, and Netflix movie pages trying to dig up a hidden gem that’s worth watching. When my eyes scan a film’s genre and read words like “thriller” and “action”, my mind automatically jumps to films like The Dark Knight, Inception, Aliens, and Die Hard. The thrills are often achieved with huge setpieces, a swelling soundtrack, great special effects, or mindbending plots. It’s hard to imagine such a film without those things, so I was certainly surprised after watching The Chaser.

The film was both shot and set in South Korea and follows a former police officer who has turned to the... less noble life of a pimp after being fired. Joong-ho’s job can’t quite be classified as easy, as he worries himself with the possibility of one of his girls running away and not paying off her “debt” to him. When two girls go missing after seeing the same customer, he sends Mi-Jin, one of his prostitutes, with a little entrapment in mind. However, when she fails to call him with the location of the john in question, Joong-ho has no choice but to investigate on his own.

The Chaser’s effectiveness comes from the tendency to stick with a sense of reality that parallels... well, reality. Unlike the films I previously mentioned, this one’s unwitting protagonist isn’t a marathon runner, doesn’t carry a gun at all times, and doesn’t have an uncanny ability to unlock every mystery with a couple furrows of a brow. Instead, Joong-ho is a perfectly fallible former detective, giving into his vices, chasing after a man with the fatigue you or I might experience, or feeling puzzled after being faced with a pile of innocuous clues. If you can believe it, this movie doesn’t even have a single explosion.

Instead, The Chaser delivers an action thriller that derives its suspense from poignant glimpses into humanity. The drama is abound, the stakes are high, and it’s easy to slip up or make a mistake. The only thing I might caution with this film is its unpredictable violence. While there isn’t any horrible gore on the screen, some graphic events definitely leak through the audio and plentiful visual cues.

If you can get past the subtitles, The Chaser certainly earns a viewing. It takes an overplayed genre by the horns and performs with a sense of modesty that ultimately results in an unforgettable experience.

Score: 5 out of 5
Confused about our scoring system? Read this explanation.