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An intriguing, if admittedly low-key twist on the Korean serial killer chiller never really comes together in the mediocre The Chase, the third film from The Con Artists helmer Kim Hong-sun. Leading man Baek Yoon-sik (of Save the Green Planet fame) lays on a heavy accent as he shuffles through an incongruous medley of gore and levity that rarely strays from its middle-of-the-road trajectory. The elderly begin to turn up dead in Aridong, a grimy neighborhood in Southern Korea and the only person beginning to connect the dots is a curmudgeonly landlord who constantly pesters his tenants for rent. The cops write off the seemingly unconnected deaths as accidents but when a strange man appears before the landlord with some crazy theories, they both venture...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Writer-director Cho Ui-seok’s South Korean crime action thriller Master has been pre-sold to 31 countries even before its local December release.

The KPop Herald reports that Cj Entertainment has sold the film’s distribution rights to international territories such as the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Italy, Thailand, and Singapore among others.

In Master, Filmmaker Cho Ui-seok—known for his crime hits Make it Big (2002), The World of Silence (2006) and Cold Eyes (2013)—directs three of Korea’s biggest actors.

Master is a complex battle between cops and con artists. Lee Byung-hun, who we recently saw in The Age of Shadows (2016) and The Magnificent Seven (2016), plays Jin Hyun—the charming conman and chairman of Won Network. Actor-model Kim Woo Bin, of Friend 2 (2013) and The Con Artists (2014) fame, plays Park Jang-gun—Jin’s faithful right-hand man and Won Network’s tech expert.

When Won Network gets involved in a multibillion-dollar fraud case,...

There are many things we demand from films: good stories, strong characters, style... the list goes on. However, more than everything else, there is one thing people clamor for the most, particularly in its absence: originality. We readily point out clichés and stereotypes and are quick to lament the prevalence of the done-to-death scenarios that litter today's multiplexes. This applies to most films, but there are some, particularly within the heart of the mid-level commercial field, that can sometimes get away with it. The Con Artists, released last month, is such a film. A safe-cracking whiz teams up with a veteran counterfeiter and a young hacker to pull off heists. They steal diamonds from President Jo but it's not long before they're caught. However, it just...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Final Update, Monday 4:49 Pm Pt: Across the Top 10 major studio releases internationally there’s reason for some holiday cheer. This weekend’s figures are up 19.4% over last frame with The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies leading the pack at $89M, plus strong perfs from Exodus: Gods And Kings in new key markets and the Night At The Museum finale. Still, that result is down from last year, largely due to the impact that Frozen was having on the season with a $50.5M take in the comparable frame. Five Armies in the estimates is also about 9.3% off from Smaug’s performance last year, but there are those nasty currency fluctuations to take into account.

Still, it a big weekend for local titles. Last frame’s Indian release Pk added Bollywood flair to the international box office with an offshore haul of $14.3M for a global cume of $61.46M.