Director Oh In-chun’s upcoming feature “Chasing” is a true team effort. The director and both main actors Kim Seung-woo and Kim Jung-tae are all signed with the same company, The Queen D&M, which produced the film. This is what made it all the more shocking when lead actor Kim Seung-woo told reporters at a preview press conference that he “didn’t like the film” and that it failed to “provide laughs, as promised.”

 

On second thought, one can’t help but feel that Kim Seung-woo would have done his team no favors by pretending the film was a success. Despite having two lead actors who have built up reputations in comedy and a budding idol-turned-actor on the cast, “Chasing” is neither funny nor stylish. The film seems unable to make up its mind about its direction, genre or target audience.

The story is about an awkward cop named Jeong-taek (Kim Jung-tae) and a mobster-CEO named Ssang-kal (Kim Seung-woo) who, through a series of events, have important items stolen from them by a group of high school boys led by the cocky Won-tae (Han Sang-hyuk, better known as Hyuk of K-pop boy band VIXX). The two men join together to chase down the boys and retrieve their belongings, but they have to go through an obstacle course of unfortunate circumstances along the way.

The unbelievable plot is a suitable setup for a full-on slapstick comedy, or perhaps a feel-good “bromance” movie that focuses on the cop and mobster forging an unlikely friendship. “Chasing” tries to be both and neither at the same time. It breaks the flow of Kim Jeong-tae’s slapstick with Kim Seung-woo’s smooth 007-like demeanor and action, and reveals that cop and mobster are actually old friends without ever explaining why they had a falling-out and no clear resolution of their past issues.

The tone of the film is also undecided. Scenes throughout the film are filled with cringe-worthy flat jokes while post-climax scenes are suddenly devoted to revealing out-of-the-blue secrets about the characters’ tragic pasts. Perhaps the mismatch was due to internal disagreements about the script -- Kim Seung-woo said flat-out at the press conference that he had rejected many of the director’s “ridiculous” script suggestions that had alluded to Kim’s former works.

Whatever the underlying reason, the movie fails to move beyond an exhausting, incoherent cat-and-mouse chase with additional characters and subplots hurled in viewers’ faces at random times. It’s not easy for a lead actor to criticize his own film to a roomful of reporters while sitting next to the director before the movie even opens – but with “Chasing,” it’s possible that Kim Seung-woo was just trying to protect what was left of his integrity and dignity, even at the cost of flopping his own team.

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)