"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. 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. "The Chaser"'s condemnation of the police makes 2005's "Memories of Murder" look marshmallow soft — its cops are lazy, careless, quick-tempered, deaf to what they don't want to hear, more concerned with image than with results and therefore always in search of a way to shift blame. They ignore the killer's inconvenient claim that one of the girls may still be alive, and achieve a sense of urgency only when it becomes clear that they have to close the case in order to take attention off the fact that earlier in the evening they allowed a protester to throw shit at the mayor during a public appearance. Joong-ho, carrying out his own more violent, though only slightly more competent, investigation, has the more compelling motivation of money to be retrieved, though he also prefers to believe that the girls were merely sold until the disturbing evidence otherwise becomes impossible to ignore.

Excerpt from IFC located HERE