The film begins with the discovery of the first victim. The first of the three detectives that are on the case arrive at the scene where a group of children is playing nearby. They interfere with the investigation and destroy much needed technical evidence.

This prologue has two striking qualities that will continue to appear throughout the film. First of all, there is detective Park Doo-Man (played by the excellent Song Kang-ho) who is almost completely alone. There's no uniformed officers, no photographers, no forensic experts, and even more unique, this appears to be quite ordinary. He don't comment on why so few police officers is helping with the case (this is an important comment that the film is making,…

What's it like to be a subject of obsession, to be frightened for your life, to know other women like you have been murdered close to home, that the police are nowhere close to catching the culprit, and that at any moment you could be next? In real life scary people do exist, and it's only a matter of chance sometimes that separates the victims of crime and those who escape death or lifelong traumatizing thoughts. This is the lives of women in South Korea at the time of this film.

This is now my 2nd Korean film over the holidays and let's just say I think I might be forming an obsession with foreign films, in particular Korean ones…

Memories of Murder was my first Joon-ho Bong film and it's definitely made me (more) excited to start checking out the rest of his work. As an avid fan of David Fincher's Zodiac, the comparisons made between these two led me to be quite excited for it and it didn't let me down. It's easy to see why the two are often mentioned together, as Bong went to great lengths to make sure he appropriately presented the true facts of the investigation that Murder encompasses. Set in 1986, the film focuses on Detectives Doo-Man Park (Kang-ho Song), Yong-koo Cho (Roe-ha Kim) and Tae-Yoon Seo (Sang-kyung Kim) as they try to solve a series of murders of young girls in the…

30 Countries Challenge // #16 - South Korea

Memories of Murder focuses on the true story of a small town police force trying to solve the mystery of Korea's first known serial killer. It ends up being a lot more interesting than many crime dramas due to the utter ineptitude of the detective team but this also makes it a lot more comical, and I wasn't sure at certain parts whether the film was succeeding at being a black comedy, or failing at being a serious drama.

We're so used to seeing in the media hundreds of crime shows where the police have huge (unrealistically so) amounts of ridiculous technology and know-how in order to solve the hardest of murders.…

Directed by Boon Joon-Ho

Grade: B+

I've been meaning to see this one for a long time (probably since whenever I saw Boon Joon-Ho's "The Host" which I enjoyed quite a bit) and I was happy when it finally reached the top of my Netflix queue.

This is Boon Joon-Ho's second feature and is based on the true story of South Korea's first known serial murders in the late 80's. We follow a detective trying to put together a case, but struggling to do so as he has no experience with this kind of thing and very little technology to help him. Another detective comes in from the big city (Seoul) to try and help him. Of course, the two…

Set in the 1980's in a South Korean province, under military dictatorship. A young woman is found raped and murdered under gruesome circumstances and the local detectives who employ brutal and ineffective methods are tasked with solving the case. A detective from Seul is transferred over and he must work with this provincial force, while clashing with their lead detective as to their methods, to track down the killer who seemingly leaves no clues behind. Their methods become ever more desperate as the body count grows......

Whenever I see, 'based on a true story' message at the beginning of the film, I do worry slightly it will be a bit boring. Fortunately this is an understated, touching, and at times…