Telmisseomding

Two serial killer movies in one night? Both happen to be from Korea, and are tied together by Jung-ah Yum. She was a cop in the first movie I watched, but plays a different role here. She actually smiles.

Detective Cho (Suk-kyu Han) is being investigated by Internal Affairs while he tries to solve this case. Talk about some pressure and distraction. But Han does a great job.

Eun-ha Shim is excellent as the woman tied to the victims.

It is a methodical thriller; not an excess of action, and it is accompanied by gorgeous sets and haunting music.

An enjoyable film with a great ending.

TELL ME SOMETHING is one of the few South Korean films to take a stab at the serial killer genre. The Japanese have been doing it for a while, but the Koreans haven't seemed particularly interested in the genre. TELL ME SOMETHING works in that it's incredibly atmospheric, with visuals that matches even Finch's SEVEN, the new benchmark for serial killer movies post SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

The one thing that sinks TELL ME SOMETHING is that it is rather routine, and more than once it falls into the same cliches that suffocates teen slasher films, in that characters act incredibly stupid and without reason. Also, the movie's mystery is a bit convoluted, and the ending seems almost irrelevant after all that's happened.

It's a good movie, with some very nice things to look at. The constantly falling rain will remind most people of SEVEN, and why not? TELL ME SOMETHING is basically a rehash of every American serial killer made in the '90s. Just because it's Korean doesn't make it anymore original, unfortunately.

6 out of 10

(go to www.nixflix.com for a more detailed review of this film and reviews of other foreign movies)

The Korean film-industry is without a doubt one of the most interesting and fun to watch in the world today. Titles like the haunting and oddly fascinating "Salinui chueok" (Memories of Murder) and the half-cool/half-turkey "Tube" spring to mind. You never really know what you'll get when you sit down to watch a South Korean film today, but "Tell Me Something" is an example of a movie that has a lot of things going for it but in the end leaves you more confused than satisfied.

Now I rarely have a hard time following the plot of a serial-killer movie (of recent ones I found the US thriller "Taking Lives" an insult to my intelligence as I could figure out it's every move a mile away), but "Tell Me Something" demands a lot from it's viewer. I suspect the language barrier is partly to blame, as I got the feeling some clues must have been left out in the subtitles, but the director obviously could have done a better job. I give him an A+ for it's grisly, stylish look but an F for his lack of explaining several loose ends in the plot.

The main problem is that he loads the film with tons of information but doesn't know how to treat it all. The viewer is almost drowned in clues handed out seemingly at random, leaving it an impossible task for us to try and figure out the killer, which is half the fun in movies like these.

It's really ironic how a movie about dismembered victims, it-self is told in such a dismembered fashion.

I give "Tell Me Something" a 6.5 out of 10 for it's gory, stylish execution. A fun, but not too original, soundtrack also adds to the entertainment value.

The best scene in this movie involves a big plastic garbage bag left in an elevator. I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that while I was pretty anti-elevator beforehand, now I wouldn't THINK of using one. There are some other good scenes involving garbage bags but they lack the sheer claustrophobic intensity of the elevator scene.

This is a sleek little thriller with elements borrowed in a truly cosmopolitan manner from Takeshi Kitano, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Quentin Tarantino, among others. In classic Noir tradition, it never seems to stop raining. (Back in the army I served with some guys who had just returned from Korea which, they informed me, has three kinds of weather: "Hot as a m'f'er, cold as a m'f'er and wet as a m'f'er." This movie confirms at least one-third of their insight.) It's a series of serene surfaces punctuated with corpses mutilated to some extent or other, but even the corpses exude a kind of serenity. It struck me as a good movie to watch on an airplane if you're afraid of flying, especially with a dubbed soundtrack like maybe "Genetic World" by Telepopmusik. (Most of you have probably heard at least one tune from that CD, "Breathe," it's in that car ad with the black guy driving around hallucinating various passengers.) The exotic stylized violence in the movie will distract you from the possibility of a mishap with the plane while you become tranquilizd by the almost beatific atmosphere and of course some really cute Korean chicks to look at. Best of all, the movie ends on an airplane, so your movie reverie should transfer smoothly to real life, especially if the stewardess comes gliding up to offer you a drink---hold on though, I haven't been on an airplane since the Eighties: do they even still serve alcohol?

As for the plot: oh hell, who knows, or cares. For the first five minutes it was fascinating with the cop getting grilled by the Korean equivalent of Internal Affairs because, apparently, a gangster named Park had been paying for his mother's nursing care. This gangster, if I remember right, was never actually seen, or mentioned again. Then they introduced another promising theme with a serial killer playing "musical body parts," but that also seemed to fall by the wayside once the "heroine" was introduced; most of the rest of the flick was the cop swooning over her in various ways. I stopped taking it seriously shortly afterwards. In one sequence that was so bizarre I'm not even sure I remember it right, the cop handed her his gun and then wandered off somewhere so he could get into some trouble for which his gun would have come in handy. In an American or European movie it would've been funny, but here it just left me scratching my head: "Gee, I don't know, they must have some unusual police procedures in the Orient...." There's no such thing as "calling for backup," it would seem. Maybe that makes an Asian cop "lose face"?

The film briefly threatened to come to life again in some late flashback scenes involving the heroine's eccentric artist father, but these elements didn't pan out. Ultimately we're left to draw our own conclusions. Hey, maybe the cop himself was the killer???? Or maybe he was dreaming the whole thing ... or the heroine was ... or the Red King ... or Roy Orbison .... Damn, I still miss him.

Maybe we need an English-language remake to straighten it all out?

As I watched this film, I kept asking myself: What's the killer's motivation(s)? Not until the last few minutes did that become clear – well, as clear as it could be, given the narrative structure: reminiscent of the plot of Se7en (1995) but with the addition of a number of flashbacks that do more to confuse than to wholly satisfy.

And, there are obvious nods to not only Se7en, but Silence of the lambs (1991), also, particularly the cinematography and scene construction. At one point, echoing a scene from the former, Detective Cho (Suh-kyu Han) is lying exhausted in a rain-soaked alley way, while the killer sits waiting in his car, only two metres away; but instead of running Cho down, the killer screams away into the rain. In another scene, Cho is in an elevator and looks up to see bright blood dripping from the hatchway, and then also dripping down the wall; suddenly, the hatch breaks and buckets of blood cascade onto him. Add to that are the many interior scenes in run-down tenements and so forth, all evocative of the spooky corridors of those earlier films.

Still, the story is interesting, in a macabre way: across Seoul, body parts turn up in black plastic bags, but not all parts belong to the body. Somebody is perpetrating murder piecemeal. Enter Detective Cho, somewhat under suspicion for corruption but handed the case as way to redeem his career. More mixed-up body parts are discovered, but no hands with fingerprints. So, no clues. Until a head appears with teeth fillings that can be traced. One thing leads to another until Cho finds himself knocking on the door to Chae Su-Yeon (Eun-ha Shim), a young woman who knows all the male victims.

And so begins the real mystery for Cho - and the viewer. Through questioning and a series of flashbacks, it looks like Chae is in the frame; yet, murders continue while she is under surveillance. Suspicion falls upon her father, who, from Chae's account, is shown to be a sadistic, authoritarian figure; but he can't be found. And then there's a further nod to another thriller, Kiss the girls (1997), where the idea of a deadly duo is raised and then quashed when a prime suspect is himself reduced to a jumble of parts in a bag. All very messy for Cho, and increasingly so, because he appears to be attracted to the sweet Chae Su-Yeon, a complication he can do without, you would think.

In a way, I can also compare this film to the manner in which David Lynch constructs his films. When you see any of the more recent Lynch films, the real mystery (and challenge) is how to understand the story. For Tell Me Something, the problem is how to understand the mystery because, as I said, the killer's motivation(s) is the key. And yet, at the end, there is no absolute clarity, even though the identity is obvious. So if I provide my understanding here and now, I think that would detract from the pleasure of unraveling it for yourself. Meanwhile, I'll continue to ponder the significance of the title, the significance of which escapes me.

However, the production is excellent and the special effects (dismembered bodies, body pieces, heads, gutted torsos and so on) are so realistic they may cause some people more than just some discomfit. It will certainly satisfy the slash-and-gore set who liken this movie to Italian giallo cinema, exemplified by Dario Argento's works such as Deep Red (1977), Tenebre (1982) and others. It's classified as a horror film and I think that's justified, given the underpinnings of the story and the camera work.

I can't comment much on the acting as I'm not familiar with the actors or Korean cinema, having seen only a few; generally, however, I think the actors performed quite well.

Recommended for those who like a mixed bag of horror, mystery and thriller...and body parts.