There is a scene in the Korean movie, ‘The Chaser’ (추격자, pronounced as Chugyeokja), that stays with me long after the film finished. A man, arrested for throwing a pile of shit into the face of the mayor of Seoul, is shouting at the top of his lungs to the police commissioner standing outside of the van. “Who is that?” asked the commissioner to the police officer. “He is the shit-thrower, sir.” “Well, what does he want?” “He wants to go to the toilet, sir.” I have to admit to laughing my ass off (before putting it back on to continue with the film), for it is something that I did not get watching it the first time around (without the subtitles).
Therein lies the trickiness of such reviews. Despite the fact that it is very much possible to watch and still enjoy a film without it, you can miss out on a fair number of the minor things that makes a film experience more complete that it would have been, the subtle things that would have lifted a film from being very good to being very, very good indeed. Read the rest of this entry ?
