Memories of Murder
2003
***
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung, Kim Roi-ha, Song Jae-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Go Seo-hee, Ryu Tae-Ho, Park No-shik, Park Hae-il
In the 1980s, detectives with contrasting methods team up to investigate a series of brutal rapes and murders in a rural town, but every clue they discover seems to lead to a dead end. Bong Joon-ho's crime thriller was adapted from Kim Kwang-rim's 1996 play Come to See Me, which is loosely based on real events. As a genre piece, the film is quirky and unpredictable, but tonally it is all over the place. The gruesome murders fail to make the required impact, when they are followed by ridiculously incompetent police work and general buffoonery. Like in The Host, the South Korean government remains uninterested in the events.
