Cannes. The Chaser.

"Possessed of the same bloody fatalism that pulses through many a Korean crimer, and topped by Kim Yoon-suk's star-making performance as a lowlife racing to save a woman's life, The Chaser [site] is a grisly serial-killer thriller that develops into a howl of outrage at the ineptitude of the system," writes Justin Chang in Variety. "Drawing both white-knuckle tension and moral anguish from a maddening succession of red herrings and wrong turns, Na Hong-jin's overlong but accomplished debut feature has been a runaway hit at home, and should chase down plenty of offshore bookings before its eventual US remake by Warner Bros."

Updated through 5/21.

"Some kind soul really ought to have taken first-time director Na Hong-jin aside during some point in the creation of this film and told him that Oldboy both opened and closed the book on hammer violence in Korean film," suggests Glenn Kenny. "For it is the hammer violence, at the picture's beginning and end, that helps sickeningly sink what could have been an engaging hybrid of Detective Story and The President's Last Bang.... Without giving too much away, the last twenty minutes had my seatmates and I muttering 'Jesus!' over and over."

"Na Hong-jin's promising but over-long debut is reminiscent of Bong Joon-ho's highly-regarded Memories of Murder and may possibly achieve similar returns," writes Dan Fainaru in Screen Daily. "What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for with plenty of action and wild chases which propel it towards a predictably gory climax."

A Midnight Screening.

Updates, 5/19: "The Chaser overturns genre conventions like tables in a saloon brawl - for one, the killer's nabbed in the first half of the film and, unprompted, quickly confesses," writes Alison Willmore. "Most of the suspense comes from whether or not the astronomically incompetent police force will be able to come up with evidence to actually arrest him - since he was brought in without a warrant, they have to prove he did the things he claims within 12 hours, or he walks.... From all of this, first-time director Na teases out some pitch-dark comedy."

"The climax is in the first act," notes Maggie Lee in the Hollywood Reporter. "It contains a chilling mis-en-scene of dark foliage that is a veritable fallen eden, a thrilling montage that crosscuts between the killer's attack and the pimp's frantic search, and the action lives up to its title with a heart-stopping and brilliantly edited chase through alleys and steps. The narrative loses steam midway and only clicks into place when the pimp's race to find the survivor converges with the killer's comeback."

IndieWIRE reports that IFC Films has picked up The Chaser.

Update, 5/21: "[F]ascinatingly ambiguous." Charlie Prince gets into it at Cinema Strikes Back.

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Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 18, 2008 9:55 AM