I have very high standards for Korean movies because out of my top 10 favorite movies of all time 3 of them are in a language I don't speak. Normally the Korean crime-thrillers are in my opinion the best in the world. This film is a crime thriller that tries to follow in the footsteps of blockbusters such as Oldboy and Chaser (maybe the name was chosen for that reason) but for the most part it is just an average film.

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The movie starts out in a very endearing fashion as a jaded older man who is a landlord struggles with empathy towards his tenants, many of whom have trouble paying the rent on time. He starts to see old people who have no friends and one particular person (I don't think that he was named) has been dead inside of his house for a long time and no one even noticed - this makes the landlord reflect on his own life choices and he starts to make some changes. His name is Shim Deok-su (Baek Yoon-sik ) and he seems to attempt to emulate the acting style of Choi Min-sik, who I believe is one of, if not the best Korean actor of modern times.

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The landlord ends up being a witness of sorts to a series of murders disguised as suicides and has personal information on the victims that attracts the attention of an ex-detective who had a similar case 30 years prior. Because the case before was unsolved the detective (who we later find out has medical issues) is extremely obsessive about solving this one.

Park Pyung-dal (played by Sung Dong-il ) is the recently retired detective in question and in my opinion he is easily the best character of this kinda lame-duck movie. There are many reasons why this is true but one of the main problems I had with it is that there really aren't any plausible villains in the movie, and once the real villain is revealed late in the film is isn't really so surprising as it is "meh."

The way in which the landlord just happens upon recent victims by happenstance is a bit annoying and in my mind simply poor writing. He wasn't looking for vicims, nor did he have any particularly good reason to be looking where he was, it is simply happenstance. He also always turns up alone and poorly prepared for an encounter with a potentially deadly opponent.

My search for the most thrilling Korean movies continues because this isn't one of them. It is reasonably entertaining but it fails at its attempts to copy the story and directing styles of other, far better crime-thrillers from Korea.