Quest Status: 752 / 1000
TSPDT Rank #692
Memories of Murder is not your typical true crime serial-killer thriller. It follows the police investigation of a real-life serial killer in a rural Korean farming town, but it lacks suspense, or any clues to lead the characters on their "inevitable" path to find the killer. In fact, it's practically impossible to categorize. However, it does succeed as an enigmatic mystery that gets in your head and stays there much longer than the 132 minute running time.
A lot of this has to do with Bong Joon-ho's unconventional approach to tone and character development. The first half of the movie is often more of a goofy cop buddy comedy than a thriller, with inept sidekicks Song Kang-ho (the father in Bong's recent Oscar-winner Parasite) and Kim Roi-ha trading wisecracks and beating suspects into confessions, when they're not butting horns with the seasoned new recruit from Seoul (the brooding Kim Sang-kyung).
But as the film unfolds, layer upon layer of uncertainty is added to the investigation, and the dynamics between the characters begin to subtly shift. There are moments of dark humor, frustration, creeping dead, and inertia - while the truth seems to drift farther and farther out of reach. It's a classic case of "the more you think you know, the less you actually do." One of the thing that makes the film so unsettling is that while the characters' unpredictable behavioral shifts make them seem human and relatable, these shifts also make it impossible to know who they really are. Everyone seems vulnerable and transparent, both the police and the suspects, but are they really? Can we ever really know for sure who's guilty and innocent? These are the types of questions that Bong Joon-ho asks in this film, even though even he knows that the answers are just blowin' in the wind. Or, in this case, in the rain.
--- 248 films remaining ---
NOTE
This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.
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