Memories of Murder (2003)

VERDICT:
9/10 Scarlet Ladies

One of three big reasons why Bong Joon-ho is one of the best working directors out there.

Based on actual events, Memories of Murder is about a dumbass, crooked cop in ’86 who is forced to team up with a seasoned, city boy detective after a string of women are found raped and murdered in a local South Korean village. With few leads to go off of, a serious lack of cooperation to be had and the body count rising with each new rainy day, our unlikely duo put aside their differences and put their heads together to bring South Korea’s first and most notorious serial killer to justice.

If you’ve heard of Bong Joon-ho, chances are you’ve heard of the South Korean national treasure/one of the best movies of the past decade, The Host, and/or his latest effort that’s actually a lot like this one, Mother. If not, no worries, this is as good a place as any to start. Then again, you could be the one person from Seoul who reads this blog and know exactly what I’m getting at, but for me – and I think for a lot of us English-speaking folk – this one went unnoticed. Big thanks to Dave Schleicher for finally bringing it to my attention, but it is flat-out crazy that such an outrageously good movie like this can be such a national mega hit in its homeland and totally slip under the radar in The States.

I blame all that “Americans + subtitles = boring-ass shit” noise. Serenity now, man.

Anyway, talk about one fine-tuned piece of work. The best way I can plug Memories of Murder is to say that it’s like South Korea’s answer to Zodiac (even though that makes zero sense from a chronological standpoint), and while that’s some pretty high praise, it’s really freakin’ hard to compare Bong and everything he does to anyone else or anything they have to offer.

‘Cause there are a lot of things I like about this guy. In terms of pacing, Bong keeps sucker is tight and tense from start to finish. Just one nailbiting scene after another without a moment to spare as his characters gradually pull their heads out of their asses and start piecing together a gruesome puzzle that’s always a corner short. The plot is one big slow boil that places the killer comfortably in charge with no signs of stopping and even when we’re witness to abductions that the detectives can’t see for themselves, we’re still no more in the loop than they are. It’s awesome, it keeps you guessing, it toys with the audience just as it toys with the victims, and it’s really something the way Bong manages to turn the simplest of scenarios into goddamn heart-stoppers.

But aside from the story, the characters are really the ones who keep this so interesting. One of Bong’s more enjoyable trademarks is that all of his protagonists are idiots. They don’t usually stay that way and they’ve all got their endearing qualities about them, but they’re hard-nosed idiots all the same. And so we have Song Kang-ho as lead detective Park Doo-man, a guy who’s far more content with dropkicking a confession out of the first perp in sight than actually doing his job by getting off his ass, a quality that doesn’t exactly gel with his by-the-books partner. He’s an old school cop who uses his guts instead of his brain, he thinks he’s hot shit because his badge puts him above the lawe, and he really likes dropkicking people. But then his wildly ineffective ways are finally put to the test, he realizes that he needs to up his game in order to have any chance of catching the real deal, and the change is out of sight to watch.

Song is an awesome actor to begin with, but he is given some character arc to work with here. Great performances all around, really, but Song is the man and Park is one of hell of lead.

And like all of Bong’s movies, while the story will put you right on edge and ultimately ends up being no freakin’, it is a total riot for a long time leading up to that point. Lots of great, dimwitted back-and-forths, lots of slapstick, and it once again makes for a really unique and fun complement to all the morbid goings-on around town.

This is one of those movies that more people need to know about, a movie that will change any and all of your preconceptions about foreign films and subtitles and make you wish more English-speaking studios could meet this level of quality. Plot-wise, it has a very similar feel to Mother, and that’s A-okay by me, but Memories of Murder is just some absolutely wild stuff that would hands-down be the best thing Bong’s ever done if The Host hadn’t been so effing amazing. Wasn’t too crazy about the way one of the suspects dies at the hands of a painfully avoidable oncoming train, then again, that’s my only complaint, and that was pretty forgettable.

So damn intense and so damn engrossing; like, Silence of the Lambs intense and engrossing, only this one’s all true. Like I said, just one more reason why Bong is the man.