Review: Nowhere to Hide / 인정사정 볼 것 없다 (1999)

'Nowhere to Hide' recently screened at the Korean Cultural Office's weekly film night program Cinema on the Park, with special guest introduction by Russell Edwards (SBS Film). Read on below to check out film blogger Paul Bramhall's thoughts on the film. Feel free to comment below on your views on the film.

‘Nowhere to Hide’ has a unique place in my own personal history of becoming a Korean movie fan. While it was ‘Sympathy for Mr Vengeance / 복수는 나의 것’ which secured my love for the industry in 2002, I actually viewed ‘Nowhere to Hide’ a whole year earlier back when it was released on DVD in the UK. At that point in time I was still very much the definitive Hong Kong action movie fan, and the Western world as a whole had become familiar with Asian film-making in a way that it never had before. Suddenly people knew Yuen Woo Ping’s name thanks to his action choreography on ‘The Matrix’, and John Woo had also become a household name through the recently released ‘Mission: Impossible II’.

This familiarity also had a downside though. The result was that virtually any movie which starred at least one Asian actor, and featured even a few seconds of someone holding a gun, would be ridiculously marketed along the lines of – “The next John Woo is here!”, “(Insert generic Hollywood movie title here) Meets ‘The Matrix’!” – and other such nonsense. ‘Nowhere to Hide’ was a victim to this upon its UK DVD release (the first Korean movie to get a UK DVD release no less), I still have the box with “A Sure-Fire Hit with Fans of ‘Hard Boiled’” plastered across the top, and “Is Hollywood Ready for the Next John Woo?” across the bottom. So it was I popped it into the DVD player with the expectation of an epic bullet fest with hardly a moments breath to reload, what I got of course, was something distinctly different.

The truth is you can count the number of gun shots fired in ‘Nowhere to Hide’ on one hand, and for this exact reason after that first viewing I dismissed it as a huge letdown, and wouldn’t pay it any attention until a couple of years later. Now, 14 years since it’s initial release, my feelings for ‘Nowhere to Hide’ have changed a lot, considered to be the breakout movie from director Lee Myeong-se (‘Duelist / 형사’), it is in fact a visual tour de-force of almost every cinematic trick in the book. Taken for what it is, the whole movie is an assault on the senses, with the actual plot taking an obvious backseat to a director seemingly exploring what can be done within the medium of film. ‘Nowhere to Hide’ seems to polarize people’s opinions, as do the directors other works as well. Personally I still haven’t been able to sit through the whole of his 2005 follow up ‘Duelist / 형사’, but I loved his 2007 feature ‘M / 엠’.

On paper, the plot reads like a generic cop thriller. Park Jong-hoon (‘Hanji / 달빛 길어올리기’) plays a grizzled detective, stomping through the streets of Incheon like an angry gorilla, who along with his partner, played by Jang Dong-gun (‘My Way / 마이 웨이’), are on the trail of a mysterious assassin, played by Ahn Seong-gi (‘Unbowed / 부러진 화살’), who gets one line of dialogue for the duration of the movie. To this day if there is ever a conversation around which movie has the greatest opening, I still vote for ‘Nowhere to Hide’, purely based on an amazing ten minutes of stylistic excellence which introduces us to the three main players. Set to Spanish guitar, Korean rock, & even the Bee Gees, once seen the sequence is one which will be unlikely to be forgotten.

It also sets the tone for what’s to come, displaying a visual style which bombards us with techniques ranging from monochrome images spliced in with flashes of colour, slow-motion, jump cut editing, step-printed slow motion, jump dissolves, still frames, and layering images on top of one another. It’s an audio visual feast and the movie continues in the same fashion for its duration, throwing in quirky elements such as thought bubbles to show the noodles the detectives wish they were eating while stuck in a car on a stake-out, to a fight scene played out in silhouette against sheets hanging on a roof-top set to flamenco music. Much more than anything unfolding in the actual story of the movie, you are usually left wondering what visual trickery awaits in the next scene, and it’s perhaps this focus more on the stylistic elements rather than any kind of substance which is what splits people down the middle.

Somewhere along the way though, thankfully we do feel a connection with the characters. When Jong-hoon isn’t snarling or beating someone up, there’s a quiet scene in his threadbare apartment in which he reveals he’s a cop because he can’t do anything else, and while these moments are few and far between, they do just enough to gain our support. Jang Dong-gun also strikes a chord as the less experienced partner, and went on to win the award for best supporting actor at that years Blue Dragon Film Awards. However it’s Ahn Seong-gi who steals the show, who with his limited screen times and barely a single line of dialogue, owns the screen whenever he’s on it with his subtle glances and expressions. From the opening hit on a businessman played by Song Yeong-chang (‘The Man From Nowhere /아저씨’), which also marked the first time I’ve seen CGI blood incorporated into a movie, to the final fight in the coal yard against Jong-hoon, which for anyone who’s seen ‘Matrix Revolutions’ will seem very familiar, Seong-gi is a pleasure to watch.

No doubt ‘Nowhere to Hide’, as with most of Myeong-se’s movies, will continue to divide peoples opinions. For those that strictly like substance before style, his work may seem like empty exercises in cinematic trickery, but for those willing to put aside any preconceived notions of how a movie should be structured, you’ll find a lot to enjoy, and that’s how cinema should be.

Russell Edwards introducing Nowhere to Hide at Cinema on the Park