Three not very competent detectives are struggling to find a serial murderer in a provincial Korean town. One of the most influential films by Bong Joon-ho, the author of Parasite, Snowpiercer, and The Host.
Two female bodies are found in Hwaseong in the second half of the 1980s. Both women were raped and murdered. Local detectives Park Doo-man and Cho Yong-koo are assigned to the case, but without any means and experience for a quality investigation, evidence is collected with errors, while the policemen’s main method is raising pressure on suspects. Detective Seo Tae-yoon is sent from Seoul to aid them but doesn’t seem to boost the progress much.
Memories of Murder is based on a real story of the Hwaseong maniac who killed ten women aged from 14 to 71 years shaking up the whole country—and disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. The film is not so much a crime thriller however, as a story of the entire Korean nation’s historical traumas and scars reminding about themselves even years later.
Memories of Murder
Director: Bong Joon-ho
South Korea, 2003. 131 min. 18+
