Memórias de um Assassino

The more South Korean films I see, the more I understand how it came to pass that filmmakers from that part of Asia are basically leading the world in terms of cinema in the 21st century.

These films are always very well made, with interesting plots and characterisation. But above all, they have nuance in spades. Nothing on screen is as simple as it appears. None of the characters are typical heroes or typical villains. None of the responses to anything on-screen are simple, either.

Scenes unfold in comedy and then tragedy, or the other way around - or both at once.

The additional layers to every scene and every character add a panoramic realism to what unfolds. These characters live and breathe on the screen. After watching "Memories of Murder", "The Wailing", or "The Host", you imagine that the characters are still doing what they were doing when the credits played.

That's the gift the South Koreans have given us with their wonderful and inventive cinema.

Forget America, unless you are addicted to comic book movies or remakes.

Korea is the one to watch.

This is probably the best crime thriller I've seen since "Insomnia," and contains the most haunting climax of any serial killer flick since "Seven." But like most films reaching for greatness, this is most admirable for its striking details.

The filmmakers here craft a taut, careful, and delicately strung together motion picture that relishes in its amazing development of mood, place, and character.

First, the mood: Haunting cinematography (rain falling on a small village at night, shadows darting across a thick field of grass, figures lurking in the woods, a masterfully choreographed hot pursuit scene on foot), a poignant music score (aided by the creepy use of a Korean pop song that accompanies each murder), and no-nonsense direction (peppered with fabulous doses of comic relief--how Shakespearan!) keep the film more and more intriguing at each turn and fascinating to watch.

Second, the place: South Korea, circa the late 1980's, and apparently under some sort of militia rule. This is inspired by the true story of Korea's first publicized (and still unsolved) serial killer case. This unique time and place serves as a wonderful respite from the typical American big-city setting of so many other films of this ilk.

Finally, the character development: The small details revealing the haunted souls of the detectives on the case is nothing short of brilliant. Witness the tiny executions of minutae: The cloth one rogue cop wraps around his boot so as not to leave scars when he kick-boxes suspects into submission, the harried chief of police checking his own blood pressure while trying to keep his off-the-cuff detectives in line or fighting to keep headline-starved reporters at bay, the young female officer desperately trying to showcase her abilities in crime solving between serving the chauvinistic detectives cups of fresh coffee, the outsider detective from Seoul's insistence that documents never lie (and the brutal irony at the climax that challenges his entire sense of being), and the main village detective's scathing speech on the difference between American FBI agents and Koren policemen. The beauty is in the details, and this film, like all the great ones, revels in their uncovering.

One flaw is that some might find the film a bit long in the tooth, but this is not to be missed for fans of serial killer thrillers and police procedural movies. For the Korean filmmakers, and the amazing cast...this is their master stroke.

Beginning in the fall of 1986 and continuing for the next four years South Korea was haunted by the nation's first recorded serial killer. Preying upon women in a remote rural community the killer was both vicious and meticulous, strangling his victims with their own undergarments and leaving nothing of any use to the police investigating the crimes. The killer was never caught.

I do not envy any director trying to make a true crime film, particularly not one so high profile and so recent that the crimes still live on in the public consciousness. Stray too far in one direction and you devolve into saccharine sentimentality, go the other direction and you risk crass exploitation. Director Bong Joon-Ho avoided both of these traps by charting an altogether different route: he has made a film that is not about the killer or the crimes or the victims but one that is purely about the police officers charged with the case and the devastating emotional toll it took on their lives. In charting his unusual route Bong has created a bleak masterpiece, one that took home a stack of film awards in its native land but which has been largely neglected on these shores until now.

The film begins with the first body discovered, a woman strangled with her own stockings, raped, tightly bound, and hidden in a drainage culvert. The detective in charge of the case is Park Du-Man (Song Kang-Ho) and it is immediately clear that he is out of his depth, that the entire local police force, in fact, are out of their depth. The crime scene is chaos, crowded by reporters and locals trampling over potentially vital evidence. Park himself is not what you'd call a systematic investigator, scoffing at the scientific approach and trusting in his supposedly unerring eye at picking out criminals just by looking at them. He relies on swagger and bravado and the brute force of his uneducated assisting officer Jo Yong-Gu.

Serving as a foil to Park and Jo is Seo Tae-Yun (Kim Sang-Kyung) a detective from Seoul who has volunteered to assist with the investigation. Seo is the polar opposite of Park - methodical and rational - and it takes mere moments for the two to clash, clashes that lead to the two of them overlooking some key pieces of evidence.

As the film progresses and the body count continues to rise you can feel a sense of desperation slowly settle over the department. Under educated, under manned and woefully under equipped the local force is simply not up to the task. As the realisation that they will not find the evidence they so badly need begins to set in Park and Jo resort to planting evidence to bring in suspects Park picks out with his 'keen eye', suspects they then set out to extract coached confessions from. The process inevitably leads to public humiliation. Soon even Seo begins to lose his faith in reason and just as things bottom out they finally catch a break and settle on a prime suspect, one who truly appears likely to be their man. But can they make it stick? What sets Memories of Murder apart from the crowd are the rich performances from its leads and the sure hand of Bong Joon-Ho. Bong knows exactly what he wants to do with this film and he steers the ship with a firm hand. He has a keen eye for imagery but he consistently avoids the cheap resolve, the quick hit, in favour of a slowly building mood and the film is all the stronger because of it. Song and Kim are both stellar in their roles, giving their characters much needed depth. You can feel their frustration and helplessness continually growing and when the final crushing blow is delivered you can feel their utter despair at being abandoned by a system that they have given their lives to. Bong isn't just asking how this could happen, how someone could be as evil as this killer, but how could a government allow this to happen? How could the police not be given the tools and manpower they so obviously needed to protect the people? The DVD release has been given the standard Palm treatment. The transfer is strong and presented in anamorphic widescreen. The film is presented with both the original Korean language track in 2.0 stereo and an English dub in both 2.0 and 5.1. The English subtitles are solid, clearly translated and easy to read. The disc also includes a reel of cast and crew interviews discussing their characters and the creation of the film as well as an extensive reel of deleted scenes.

Memories of Murder is a minor masterpiece, a film that moved Bong immediately onto Korea's A-list of directing talent. It is richly detailed, beautifully performed and disturbing in precisely the way that people need to be disturbed in from time to time. Don't miss it.

I first saw this more than a decade ago n loved it.

Revisited it recently.

This one is truly one of the best crime drama.

I feel Zodiac, True Detective S1 n the recent The Little Things borrowed few stuff from this movie.

After the discovery of two dead bodies in a small village, a detective n his partner decides to question a mentally handicapped young man because the man used to follow one of the victims around town but their forced confessions n interrogation techniques are questioned when a detective from a city volunteers to assist them.

Apart from being a very engaging movie, this one has sufficient suspense n tons of atmosphere.

Another good aspect is the character development.

This movie amazingly showcases the faulty police interrogation techniques, the lack of securing the crime scene, evidence being improperly collected, non availability of extra police personnel, the non-existent forensic technology n the superstitious beliefs.

The isolated rural landscape where the killings take place is as much a character in the movie.

This movie is in the tradition of hard-boiled detective stories. A rag-tag bunch of largely incompetent police detectives are on the hunt for a serial killer and blunder their way through a thick-headed investigation. Although it's based on real events, it never falls into the trap of treating its characters as accurately portrayed historical figures and instead goes full-on with digging around in the dirt of the story.

The recreation of 80s Korea is amazing. Everything is portrayed as cramped, squalid and thoroughly grimey. The cinematography is great all the way to the end, as is the music, costume, set design and acting. There is a good dose of comedy in many scenes, which I didn't expect in this sort of story. It works well.

It's a rock-solid piece of cinema with characters that never fall into good guy / bad guy stereotypes. It's much more thoughtful than it initially lets on, hiding a complex theme behind a seemingly straightforward cop thriller. Will watch again.