The Chase

Shim Deok-su is a grumpy landlord of several working-class flats who constantly harasses his tenants for rent. A Korean War refugee from the north, he possesses a Scrooge-like reputation and is widely despised about town. At the beginning of the movie we see him begin his day by dropping in on Mr Choi, a hard-up tenant who has been suffering from ailments that prevent him from working, to demand rent just as the latter is being visited by charity workers from a local church. Unmoved by the volunteer’s pleas for empathy and unperturbed by their subsequent attempts to guilt-trip him, Deok-su leaves to go about his chores. As he goes about his routine he comes across two dead bodies as they are being cleared by police, one of a local drunk and the other a pensioner living alone.

In the evening Deok-su revisits Mr Choi, who has prepared an extravagant dinner in anticipation of a former colleague’s visit. The two men eat, and during the ensuing conversation, Mr Choi reveals himself to have been a former police detective and opines that the two deaths Deok-su had encountered earlier were murders committed by someone who was likely practising on the elderly prior to moving on to young women.

Mr Choi’s theory is soon proven correct. That same night he is murdered by an unseen assailant who covers up his crime, arranging Mr Choi’s body as a suicide. Meanwhile, another murder takes place just a few units down the corridor. Ji-Eun, a chaste young worker at a nearby textile mill who is another tenant of Deok-su’s, returns to find her roommate murdered, the young woman’s throat has been slit. Unbeknownst to her, the murderer has yet to leave the flat; he bashes her head and kidnaps her.

The entire neighborhood blames Deok-su for Mr Choi’s death based on the earlier encounter with the church workers. The only person who doesn’t believe this is Mr Choi’s former partner, retired Detective Pyung-Dal, who shows up a day late. Pyung-Dal digs up proof that Mr Choi was far from suicidal and shares with Deok-su details concerning a string of similar murders of pensioners and young women that had taken place thirty years before. Realizing that Ji-Eun fits the profile of the victims Pyung-Dal had been describing, Deok-su rushes back to her apartment to check in on her.

After a run-in with a gang of youthful thugs — one of whom happens to be the lover of the murdered young lady — Deok-su and Pyung-Dal enters Ji-Eun’s apartment, where they promptly discovered the severed head of Ji-Eun’s roommate in her refrigerator. The former detective surmises that Ji-Eun must have been kidnapped and convinces Deok-su not to inform the police lest they put the missing woman’s life in danger. The two men then team up to track down the kidnapper and rescue Ji-Eun.

After many twists and turns the perpetrator is revealed to be a mild-mannered doctor admired around town for his medical volunteer work and his seemingly selfless devotion to his paralysed wife.

Last Updated: October 02, 2025 at 13:17