Telmisseomding

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)

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.

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?

TELL ME SOMETHING: I'm truely surprised that the Korean cinema hasn't caught on here in America. From what I've seen from them, I've never been let down. First, there was SHIRI, a big budget terrorists vs the government Hollywood style movie. Then the spectacular MUSA, and well, you know my feelings on that one. It was just fantastic. One of my favorite movies of all time. Next was BICHUNMOO, a grand martial arts Kung Fu Theatre epic. Then NO. 3 (aka NUMBER 3 KILLER), a quirky gangster PULP FICTION type of film. And now we have CHANG YOON HYUN's TELL ME SOMETHING, a very good serial killer murder mystery flick. It's also what I call a "Sunday afternoon movie". You know, it's 6 or 7 pm and there's nothing on television to watch so you nab a nice thought provoking drama or crime/suspense flick from the video store and you kick back and watch it. Director DAVID FINCHER's movies like THE GAME and SE7EN are good examples. And this is just as good. But what's so special about this particular one is that you not only get a great "thinking movie" storyline, it also supplies the pleasant blood and gore that most Hollywood films of this sort only hint to or simply happen off-screen. HAN SUK KYU (from SHIRI and NO. 3) stars as troubled police detective Cho on the trail of a terrible serial killer that chops up the bodies of the victims and spreads them throughout the city in black plastic garbage bags. But the niffty new trick here is to mix them up. In bag #1, you may get the arms, head, and heart of victim A. In bag #2 located somewhere else, you find the legs from victim A but they're mixed up with the guts and hands of victim B. Then in bag #3, there's the head and heart of victim B with the legs and guts from victim C. And so on and so on. Get the picture? So after discovering several bags and finally piecing them together like a puzzle to identify the corpses, he finds one link between them all, a lovely young museum currator named Su-Yeon (actress SHIM EUN HA). She's had affairs with all the male victims at one time or another so maybe she's gotta be the killer, right? Well, as I said before, this is more of a "thinking" movie so it's never who you'd expect. There'll be plenty of other suspects to point the finger at as the movie goes on. So without giving away any more details that may spoil the movie, I'll wrap this review up rather short. All in all, this was just another example of how good the Korean film industry has been for me. I hope they continue to impress and maybe, just maybe, they'll find a home here in America.

"Tell Me Something" is a slick and stylish noirish Korean crime flick which tells of one cop's obsession to stop a serial killer who dismembers his victims and leaves body parts in trash bags to be found. Long on style and atmospherics, "TMS" becomes somewhat convoluted and disjointed, fails to connect on an emotional level, and ends with an unsatisfying conclusion. Nonetheless, audiences into grisly crime flix may enjoy the above average and artful execution.

Note - The VHS I watched was subtitled and, though dialogue is kept to a minimum, something may have been lost in the translation.