Memories of Murder

South Korean director Joon-Ho Bong's Memories of Murder (2003) is an exceptionally well-built machine, using classic tropes of the serial killer thriller and tweaking them enough and making us care about the characters enough that we forgive the rote formal procedure of the film. That is, while this film is nothing especially original, it fashions mood and an atmosphere all its own that lets it rise above simple remakes of earlier films.

Inspired by true events, the film examines the first known incident of a serial killer in 1986 South Korea, where his female victims were found raped, gagged, and mutilated whenever there would be a rainy day. Bong utilizes the basic atmosphere of Se7en, a film that itself felt like the crimes only took place in perpetual rain, but it never feels like lip service. The whole inspired by true events helps gloss over some of these issues, but it's largely that we honestly care for our principle detectives, despite their faults. Our rural detective garners the most sympathy in his mistaken desire to simply receive praise and fashion a confession onto the first suspect he and his partner can torture into confessing. With the arrival of another detective from Seoul, though, the film shifts into a more humane examination of crime investigation. Indeed, the lead characters’ humanity may be what is most helpful to shifting this film away from simple stereotype.

Another way that the film transcends simple genre filmmaking is the atypical political critique, since the film implies that some of the inability of the detectives’ attempts to catch the killer lie in the social and political turmoil in South Korea at that time, since police forces were being used to quell political uprisings in larger cities. Memories of Murder pays enough subtle attention to this aspect that it worked as fascinating subtext and gives the film a sociopolitical context that most films of this genre lack. This quality lends the film a moral critique that likewise lets the film extend beyond bits of comedy and a steady thread of suspense. Love that shot of the kidnapper's appearance in the rainy background as one of his victims realized that the whistling wasn't only her own. Subtly terrifying. A beautifully crafted genre piece, and what a muted, introspective finale.

Memories of Murder: 8/10