Today I am going to provide a review on one of my favorite movies. To define the kind of movies I like, I prefer dark, deep, suspenseful, police procedural movie with comical interlude of characters working around a story. I know based on my definition you might feel its a tad impossible to make a movie which I might like, but you can actually relate many of our great movies in this category. Le locataire(Roman Polanski - 1976), Ôdishon(Takashi Miike - 1999), Geu nom moksori(Jin Pyo-Park - 2007), Identity (James Mangold - 2003), Insomnia (Christopher Nolan - 2002), Se7en (David Fincher - 1995) ... etc are all some of my favorite movies.
Well coming to the movie I am going to review below, the name is Salinui chueok (Memories of Murder) directed by internationally acclaimed (post this film) director Joon Ho-Bong. His movies generally will have very minimal sets, realistic characters and best of all great cinematography. Some of the scenes in this movie will make you wanna really experience the set up first hand, and yes it's that special and beautiful.
Starting with the story first, its based on a set of true incidents which happened in South Korea around 1986. The serial murders which had happened and concurrent investigation run by the local law enforcement and the subsequently by the military government's investigative police forms the backbone of this movie. The way the gruesome murders happen, it's reaction by the local law enforcement agencies, the reaction from the locals and press, its ultimate toll on the detectives are the focal points of this movie. The character development in this movie is utterly spell binding. The stereotype small town cops who bully around people for closing any kind of criminal investigation, overly ignorant sergeants, village simpletons, aggressive deputies, curious onlookers, factory workers, ... ,etc is very strongly indicative of the mindset of people in rural part of any country. By the end of the movie the viewers can empathize with the detectives(in their helplessness).
Some of the scenes which will remain in the memories of viewers forever are the dark shadows on the wet village fields, the red dressed detective walking in the rain(to the background of a Korean pop song), the detectives kicking a confession out of every one they feel as a suspect, the re-enactment gone terribly wrong in front of hoards of onlookers and one of my favorite the chase scene (of a suspect) from the outskirts of the town till the construction area.
The actors selected to portray the roles are one of the strong points in the movie, Kang Song Ho (Current Korean superstar) as the small town detective, Sang Kyung-Kim as the detective from Seoul, Kim Rae-Ha as Song Ho's violent deputy, the 2 Sergeants played brilliantly by (Byeon Hee-Bong and Song Jae-ho) and probably in his best role ever Park No-Shik( as the Baek Kwang Ho). Joon Ho-Bong is well known for his first movie Barking Dogs Don't Bite (a black comedy) and his latest block busters The Host (biggest grossing Korean movie of all times) and The Mother but this movie made him one of the directors to follow from Korea.
The movie is really a must watch for all folks who like crime, suspense, thrillers and police procedural genres in their movies. You may feel this review doesn't have the actual story, but since this being a suspenseful thriller, I can't spoil the thrill for the others. It does have many gruesome scenes of torture and murder and is a R rated movie.
It can be purchased from either eBay or Memories Of Murder (yes I don't support illegal downloads). You can find the trailer at Trailer (with Eng Subtitles) .
Also the delay in posting my subsequent blog to the match preview was because of the result of the match (we lost 2 - 1 not a bad result). We lost because of 2 goal keeping howlers by Fabianski which is hard to take at that level. However we have won the subsequent EPL match against Black Cats (Sunderland) and that has provided me the composure to write this one :).
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