Teureok / The Truck (2008) - A fast paced and diversified thriller from South Korea - 8/10 (05/03/14)

"The Truck" is another highly intriguing contemporary movie that easily beats most of today's Western films.

This time, it's a quite twisted thriller with a few elements from multiple other genres. It includes the typically dark but sometimes also slapstick orientated Korean humour that you either like or hate. Personally, it made me chuckle from time to time. The funnier scenes are especially in the beginning of the flick and don't take too much space.  

As the movie goes on it gets more serious and grislier. In the beginning, the film is some sort of a drama. The movie then becomes a tense thriller and even explores the psycho thriller and splatter genre. Apart of the first twenty minutes that introduce the characters, the film is quite fast paced and also features a lot of action scenes. There is no big budget behind this production but the movie lives from its solid actors, the tense atmosphere and quite a few twists in the plot. This film will bring you on the edge of your seat until the final five minutes. 

The conclusion of the movie could have been a little bit more detailed but the way this film ends fits to its rather fast pace. 

Let me tell you a little bit more about the story. It portrays a single father who is working hard but doesn't earn much money. The only thing he owns is an old truck. He doesn't have much time for his daughter who lives with her grandmother and he can't keep all the promises he makes to her. On the other side, he really loves his daughter more than everything else. She is the sunshine in his life that keeps him going on in difficult situations. But as her mother and grandmother before her, the daughter has a problem with her weak heart. When she gets exposed to big physical efforts or stress, she may lose conscience. When the poor daughter gets exploited by some silly girls, she gets so sick that she has to go to the hospital. She needs a costly operation to get a donor's heart implanted. The doctor tells the father that they already found a donor but that a rich family is also interested in buying that heart to save their son even though this young man will never be cured and die anyway. The doctor tells the desperate father that he has to get 60,000 dollars as soon as he can to finance the operation before the rich family officially purchases the heart. 

The father tries to get some money together. He sells a few things, talks to friends and goes to see loan sharks but he still can't make enough money. A fellow worker suggests him to go and play poker. The father initially refuses as he thinks that gambling is stupid and you can only lose. But soon he realizes that there is no other chance for him because time is running out. The father goes out to gamble against a few local gangsters. In the beginning, they let him win quite a lot but when they start to gamble with bigger sums, the poor father gets tricked and loses everything. He realizes that his fellow worker had been playing tricks on him and that he is collaborating with the gangsters to attract potential victims and get their money. The desperate father loses his temper and gets involved in a brawl with his fellow worker and the gangsters. The fellow worker escapes into a room in the cheap hotel and is followed by the father and the gangsters. They are quite shocked when they realize that a massacre happened in this room. A menacing gangster is still at the scene of the crime and has just killed several victims and is about to kill the two witnesses. When he hears the young father's story he changes his mind to exploit his unfavourable situation. He tells him that he will get the gambling money back so that he might have enough to pay for his daughter's operation but the family father has to get rid of the dead bodies in a distant province without getting caught by the police. 

The family father puts the bodies of the dead on the back of his truck and starts his journey. Meanwhile, a serial killer escapes from a police escort. When the family father passes beside a police truck that got off the road, he realizes that somebody has killed everybody inside and that this is where the escape just happened. The scared man wants to go on but soon discovers an injured and surviving police officer. The officer gets on his truck and tells the family father that he is the only surviving police officer of the escort. He thinks that the murderer is on his way to another city where his mother lives and orders the truck driver to go there immediately. The family father realizes that the police officer is acting strangely and when they stop at a gas station, he gets to see a poster that identifies the injured officer as the escaping serial killer.

The family father has no choice but to get back on the truck as he doesn't want to raise suspicion. A true nightmare begins. How can they both escape from the police now as there are checkpoints everywhere? Will the serial killer realize that the truck driver got to know his real identity and kill him? What are the serial killer's real intentions and plans? Can the family father get rid of the dead bodies on his truck? Will he be back at time to get the money and save his daughter?

From that point on, the movie reserves us many surprises that I don't want to spoil you. By now, my review should have intrigued you enough to watch this gripping movie. I'm sure you won't regret it.