I am continuing my Song Kang-ho education with Memories of Murder, a film from Bong Joon-ho based on the mystery of Korea’s first known serial killer. In 1980s small-town South Korea, Detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho) unearths a woman’s body near a rice paddy, tied up and strangled to death in a manner similar to other recent unexplained murders. He and his violence-prone partner Yong-koo (Kim Roe-ha) suspect a developmentally disabled young man due to his stalkerish connection to one of the victims, and hold him for questioning. Often “questioning” involves a beating and forced confession.
Detective Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung), a police officer from Seoul, is brought in to help the investigation. He approaches the case with more deductive reasoning and a close look at details, often at odds with Doo-man’s more forceful way of doing things as he frequently debunks the latter’s theories and suspects. As they begin to determine the connections between the murders, they can eventually predict when another will happen, but are no closer to the killer’s identity. When a likely candidate is found in the form of an intelligent young factory worker, DNA evidence is sent to America to be analyzed (they don’t have the facilities themselves), but the results only raise new questions.
Again Bong Joon-ho has successfully fused various elements and genres into one quite entertaining film. It’s an intriguing mystery, a cops-at-odds tale, a moving drama, and at times a comedy. The two lead actors are wonderful, taking roles that could be serious cop/goofy cop stereotypes and instead forging complex, layered characters whose dedication and hesitation are clear. The cinematography is excellent, making use of the large stretches of rice paddies and persistently overcast sky, causing certain colors to pop significantly.
My main issue with the film is its length: this is a really long movie. Like, 130 minutes. And it starts off pretty slowly, gradually building into a more and more engaging, intense movie. It’s not boring, but a good part of the beginning drags and I just wasn’t very into it. I think it completely pays off by the end, because it just gets better and better as it goes on, but I did feel a bit frustrated at first. Memories of Murder is still a great modern mystery, giving a fairly objective view of small-town Korean police officers and their investigative practices in the mid-80’s. I hadn’t known anything about the real-life story beforehand, so it’s really interesting to see how the case was approached in comparison to something like, say, the Zodiac killer in the US.
4/5
Popularity: unranked [?]
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