my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   Memories of Murder
Director:   Joon-ho Bong
Year:   2003
Genre:   Crime
Times Seen:   1
Last Seen:   01.04.07

Other Movies Seen By This Director (2)
- The Host
- Parasite

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
01.04.07Netflix From the guy who did The Host, this is the story of the police investigation following Korea's first serial murderer. The ending of this movie really affected how i feel about it and it's an ending that I'd read before seeing and really didn't want to know so... in the interest of safety to both of you out there who read this... if you haven't seen this movie then know that it's good and I liked it. From here on out, it's spoiler madness.

So... the movie's pretty long, and at the 2 hour mark you really start to wonder how this thing is gonna end. The movie's as much about the state of Korea and the way it works than it is about the murders... So the movie ends and the murderer is not caught. All of their suspects are cleared and they're left with no leads... then it fast forwards to current day where the main cop is now working a different job and he revisits the first crime scene and talks to a girl who just inadvertantly saw the killer. point being, he's still out there. I guess all unsolved crime stories have to end on this kind of anticlcimactic note - and this movie makes me really anxious to see Zodiac and how they choose to end that one - but I think this movie handles the inevitable conclusion pretty well by making it pretty disconnected from the get go. We never really get much in the way of character background or motivation... it's more like we work for the paper and we're assigned to follow the case so we follow it and at the end we get re-assigned and that's it. I get how this might put some people off, not having a clear protagonist to empathize with or a clear antagonist to focus your aggression on but hey... I bet that's how it really is more often than not, so in that regard I really liked how the movie owns that instead of tries to find hollywood-esqe loopholes around it.

It looks gorgeous and flows well, but it is over two hours. I liked it, though. I liked it a lot.