Arrested motion : leaps and bounds in the Korean detective film

Nowhere To Hide (1999), directed by Lee Myung-se, was the film selected to open the inaugural Sydney Asia Pacific Film Festival in March. (1) A virtuoso rollick through the 72-day pursuit of a ruthless gangland assassin, the film signals exciting new developments in the Korean cinema of the last few years. Visually-striking, technically stunning, daring with genre and very funny, the film seems to slide effortlessly across nuances of mood and feeling to create both a tension and a sense of play that rivet the audience from the first shot to the last. Although a short review cannot do justice to the complexity or the innovativeness of the film, this article attempts to bite the bullet and to describe a few aspects of the film, mostly in its first ten minutes.