Nowhere To Hide

Director: Lee Myung-se

Starring: Park Joong-Hoon, Ahn Sung Kee, Jang Dong-Kun and Choi Ji-Woo

Plot: A mysterious assassin by the name of Sungmin (Ahn Sung-Kee) walks up the famous forty steps in Inchon Korea then stabs another man to death and disappears with a briefcase full of cash. When the police start their investigation they reveal an underground drug world at war.

The relentless Detective Woo (Park Joong-Hoon) and his partner (Jang Dong-Kun) are put on the case to track down Sungmin, the chase is on through the city streets and hideaways. During their pursuit they also hunt down other notorious names in the drug world. This leads them to Jugo (Choi Ji-Woo) who is the woman that loves Sungmin, eventually through her they track him down and now it’s the last chance they have of getting him.

Review: Nowhere To Hide is a love it or hate it film, this is based on reviews that I’ve have read, none of them seem to give an average score, they either think it’s the worst film ever made or like myself love it. I don’t know what it is about this film that makes me like it so much, the plot is confusing and rarely makes sense, making it hard to follow, but there are so many other things happening on screen that you sort of phase out from the story. The director has used the film like art, experimenting with different angles and editing techniques, in some places its edited in MTV music video style. He uses jump-cuts, glitches, film speed, freeze-frames, juxtapositions and transitions in a bizarre way, so much so that I can guarantee you’ve never seen anything like it before. That’s what’s so appealing about this film is that its like its own genre. The camera never holds stills either, handheld or stable its always moving, most noticeable during the long tracking shots of the chase scenes. The lighting is also more evident here than in other films, in one scene, a fight is shown only with the shadows of the actors. The music is well scored and really drags you into the film, from soft classical tunes heard during the sensitive scenes to the rock like rhythm of the action scenes, none of the music seems out of place.

The lead actor Park Joong-Hoon is both funny and serious at playing the role of Woo, he is just as violent towards witnesses as he is towards the criminals. The director doesn’t hold back in showing police brutality, in most cases the police are actually worst than the gangsters. It’s explained later that Woo became a policeman because he dad said otherwise he’d turn out to be a gangster. Jang Dong-Kun is a fantastic actor, and even here in one of his early roles he gets to go through all the emotions. The assassin played by Ahn Sung-Kee gets to throw down with both policemen, first is Dong-Kun on the train (which in my opinion in more tense than the finale) and then Joong-Hoon in a coal mining town. The finale lets the film down, after the audience has just witnessed the hyper kinetic battle on the train, now they want to see something even better for the ending, sadly in my eyes it didn’t deliver the goods. Its starts getting into fantasy, I’d preferred it if they have kept with the same realistic style that was evident beforehand.

The weather is almost like another character in the film, like the fluid camera movements and editing, it too is always changing. The low glowing early morning sun suddenly changes into a raging snowstorm then into a heavy downpour in the blink of an eye. The one thing I loved about the finale was the stylisation of the rain drops synchronised with the performers.

Nowhere To Hide is certainly different and is well worth seeking out, hopefully you’ll be one of those people in the “love it” category as its really mind-blowing. The acting is flawless and the script is well written, what’s not to like? Being a huge fan of Korean cinema myself I cannot recommend this enough to other Korean cinema enthusiasts, this was before the boom of Korean films becoming popular in the west, I wouldn’t be surprised if this help them sit up and take notice.

Rating: 8.8 out of 10.0