Nowhere to Hide (1999/2000) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/ Member: Online Film Critics Society
Starring Joong-Hoon Park, Sung-Kee Ahn, Dong-Kun Jang. Directed by Myung-se Lee. Not Rated (would be PG-13 or mild R).
...and the year's most visually exciting movie to date comes to us from... South Korea? That's right, like Run Lola Run in 1999, the most aesthetically unusual picture I've seen this year is not American. It's called Nowhere to Hide and it's a fierce exercise in cinema as a purely visual art form. The film laughs in the face of foolish things like "plot" and "dialogue," instead bombarding us with display after display of innovative, imaginative stylizations. It's not to be treated as a story on celluloid but rather as a kaleidoscope of dynamic images.
Detective Woo (Joong-Hoon Park; the name is evidently a tribute to famous Hong Kong/US director John Woo) has just received an especially difficult assignment. He has to catch the perpetrator of the "Forty Steps" murder, something having to do with drug trafficking. The killer is a drug lord named Chang Sungmin (Sung-Kee Ahn), a master of escape on par with Houdini, and will prove nearly impossible to catch.
So Woo and partner detective Kim (Dong-Kun Jang) spend countless sleepless nights tracking down Sungmin. There are foot chases, interrogations, fistfights, wrestling bouts and stakeouts. Woo and Kim find Sungmin's lover and try to pry his whereabouts out of her but to no avail. Woo, with a crushed hat, hunched figure and funny walk, does a lot of complaining about his job but seems to revel in it all the same. He has a love-hate relationship with his occupation: he seems tired of it but doesn't seem able to do without it.
This is the plot. It's nothing major but it's of little consequence anyway. Nowhere to Hide is not concerned with it. Director Myung Se- Lee's main intention is to do as many things as possible with violence. There are fights that suddenly turn into rhythmic waltzes, chase scenes transforming into paintings and boxing matches taking place entirely in shadows on a wall. Violence gets turned into slapstick, impressionism and dance numbers -- though we're not always proud of what we're so gleefully enjoying, the film is exhiliratingly surprising.
Lee likes his camera tricks. There's slow motion, stop-motion, high- contrast black and white, morphs and a lot of other things. Unlike a certain controversial american auteur whose name I won't mention (yes I will -- Oliver Stone), these things don't get in the way of the story (mainly because there's not much of a story to get in the way of) or give you a headache. They're there to please and to amaze, not to overwhelm. It's hard to argue that they serve a purpose other than to be nifty, but what they do, they do well.
The pamphlet for the movie quotes Lee saying that the reason for Nowhere to Hide was to explore movement as something that fuels action, not vice-versa. I dunno. It's an unconventional action movie, but it's still an action movie. Watching it, I didn't sense aspirations to be more than that. It's funny, cool, exhilirating, eye-popping, fun. The plot, characters and actors are there, I suspect, only because Lee thought he couldn't draw audiences if he made just a collection of images without at least a facade of a storyline. I don't get to say this often, but no substance -- no problem.
Grade: B
©2000 Eugene Novikov
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