On the face of things The Chaser seems like a pretty classic hard boiled cop movie in the dirty Harry style. That is, if Harry was South Korean, and a pimp. A former cop, now pimp (because this is the career choice of former cops apparently) keeps losing girls, and he is in trouble if he doesn’t find them. The thing is, a rather fortuitous string of events leads to a maniac sitting in the local police station admitting to murdering all of those girls with a hammer and chisel. The cops though, the ones who have not been kicked out of the force to become pimps are either two stupid, too slow, or too tied up in their own ridiculous bureaucracy to get the evidence they need to put him behind bars. So it all comes down to pimp cop. There is the little caveat though that if the evidence isn’t found within 12 hours the maniac goes free. The tension in this film is crazy good, and this makes it really engaging. As awesome as this all sounds, its actually slightly more thoughtful than this description implies. I am sure you can guess, that given my pronounced distaste for protagonists that are assholes this must serve as some sort of redemption fable, but again, it isn’t this simple. The absolute best thing about The Chaser is the fact that plays so effectively with the unexpected. Everything you expect to happen happens, but this is just to lull you into the false sense that you know what is going on. You’ll be sitting, watching, thinking, ‘oh then he’ll do this, and she will do this, and …” …suddenly… “what…he…why did he do that?…she wasn’t supposed to do that…”. It really is a master class in genre conventions and how to mess with them. I mean this in the best possible way, you wont, for instance, be wondering anything ridiculous why like everyone turned avatar blue, or the world suddenly turned upside-down, everything still works within the world of the movie, it just works in such a way that you wont be able to guess what is coming. It makes it a really special addition to the badass cop genre. Even if he is a pimp.