Great Film overall

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Myung-se Lee may dream of one day being the Korean John Woo, but he has a long way to go.This was a good film, but it it not in Woo's class. The action was in short bursts, with most of the time spent in routine police procedure. Well, I say "routine" as Detective Woo (Joong-Hoon Park) is anything but routine. I don't know why they would give Miranda warnings in Korea, but he certainly throws out any other procedures that we take for granted in an obsessive hunt for a drug dealer. I just wish we had him going after Osama bin Laden.The hunt takes almost three months and his partner Kim (Dong-Kun Jang) doesn't fare well in the venture. I did find it very interesting that Woo instigated a snowball fight with Kim to take his mind off a shooting. Having been in the trenches dealing with scum, I know that sometimes you have to do those things to heal.One kudo I give the film is the cinematography and music. I was really impressed with the way the leaves, the snow, and the rain, as well as color was used to set the mood.I'll look for more by Myung-se Lee to see if he gets better.

Emblazoned on the cover of the UK DVD release for 'Nowhere to Hide' is a line of text taken from a newspaper review claiming it is "a sure-fire hit with fans of Hard Boiled." Written on the back is another similar exclamation, stating "Is the world ready for the next John Woo?" In terms of marketing they certainly picked their strategy yet it's an extremely misleading tag. In fact, I'm not sure either of those quotes come from people who have actually seen it, because this is more of a Dirty Harry style cop thriller than a Chow Yun-Fat shoot 'em up with a body count so astronomical it's a miracle there's anyone left alive in East Asia.The story (what little of it there is) revolves around two Detectives, Woo and Kim as they attempt to track down a killer named Chang Sungmin. And that's all you need to know really because there's very little in the way of expanding on this in the film whatsoever. The murder committed at the start which triggers the hunt is given no explanation or motive, simply brushed off as 'drug related' and the rest of the running time seems committed to sticking in as many fancy camera tricks as possible and this is where it all falls flat."Nowhere to Hide" you see, wants to be cool. Desperately. It wants to be spoken of in the same breath as Tarantino and it yearns for this hipster status so much it falls flat on it's face, the posturing braggard's mask slipping and revealing the sweaty nerd underneath. Just look at the characters walking in slow motion towards the camera with rock music playing behind them, the whole sorry enterprise just screams "LOVE US" so much it makes you cringe. And this is carried over into leading man Joong-Hoon Park's performance. He's one of these stereotypical 'bad guy' cops you see that defies the regulations and matches it with a cocky swagger. And this loosely translates as him beating people up, threatening women and setting his face to maximum leer and gurn mode throughout while his attempt at swaggering has him walking like a hunched over prat for the whole movie.One area it does succeed however is in the dizzying showmanship of the numerous cinematography gimmicks on display. The first five minutes for instance are filmed entirely in black and white and there are loads of intriguing tricks littered throughout, providing a pulsing sense of adrenalin that the plot cannot provide. It may go overboard at times (do we really need to have the shot of several policemen running into a hiding place in Matrix style slow motion?) but this flashy excess does help it stand out from the crowd.In short then, not a successful movie. If you want a good Asian cop thriller, ignore this and go straight for Infernal Affairs. If you've already seen it, just watch it again. This is no substitute at all. The camera tricks may provide a good talking point, but the irritating lead, non-existent story and frankly rather rubbish action scenes let everything down. Style over substance to a T.

As so many viewers have expressed their own opinions about this movie, I will just talk about some quotes and music in this movie.When Detective Woo tries to talk the criminal's girl into spilling his whereabouts, he says;"To judge is for judges, to forgive is for God, and for a cop it's to catch."And for your added information on this movie, regarding this movie's theme song 'Holiday' by Beegees, it was related to real-life crime drama that happened ten plus years ago in Korea.Some prisoners broke jail, ultimately taking a normal family as hostages. While the police was outside the house, one of them wanted to hear this song and shot himself.They left some kind of legacy with saying "Guilty without money, not guilty with it.(Money can make the guilt go.)"So the song has kinda had some emotional value in dark alleys around Korea since then.

Lee Myung-se is one of the most gifted directors of the contemporary "new wave" movement in Korean cinema. He is a director who's in love with the medium of film, and it shows in his dazzling Nowhere to Hide. The film's plot involves a standard cops and robbers chase, but that's not where its strength lies. This film doesn't bother itself much with "substance," e.g. richly developed characters with whom we can sympathize, a serious look at "the human condition," etc. Instead, Nowhere to Hide is all about style and the joy of making films. Lee's style is sort of an amalgamation of Wong Kar-wai (the visuals) and John Woo (the action), and Nowhere to Hide offers some sumptuous feasts for the eyes. To offer some salient examples: There is an early assassination sequence which is so beautifully shot and creatively edited that it plays out like an impressionist music video (and it also happens to be my favorite scene from any film of its year, 2000); There is a fight sequence which is done completely in shadows; And there is a final fist fight between a cop and robber in the rain that is wonderfully aesthetic. During many scenes of this film, Lee stretches, breaks, and otherwise "tweaks" the visual grammar of film to produce a work that is consistently challenging and thoroughly original. Seldom has "eye candy" been this sweet. This film might not have much by way of substance, but in terms of pure filmmaking craft and originality, it's pretty hard to beat.