Nowhere To Hide

LEE Myung-se’s action films remind us that the word “action,” before anything else, means movement. Unlike conventional action cinema, which draws its visceral pleasures from chases, fights, explosions, gunfire, swordplay, and stunts, Nowhere to Hide turns even a single bead of sweat falling onto a shoe into a means of action. The story is simple. Detective WOO and his major crimes unit pursue JANG Sung-min, a suspect in a murder case. But as is often the case in LEE Myung-se’s films, the narrative itself is little more than a MacGuffin. Through the act of pursuit, he explores the essential nature of action—that is, of cinematic movement. Even in the climactic confrontation at a coal mine, the film is less concerned with settling the contest than with the trajectories and impact of the men’s punches, and with the rhythm of the images they produce. It remains one of the most original action films in the history of Korean cinema.