Memories of Murder (DVD)
The running time is 2 hrs. 12 mins..
While Memories of Murder is not a horror film it still has its thrills as this cop drama starts off slow with some really bad acting, but ultimately turns itself around thanks to an intriguing storyline as it tells the true story of a serial killer in South Korea, and I should point out, the first serial killer in South Korea. The difference with this flick however is that it does not focus its attention on the gruesome and grisly murders of unsuspecting young women. Nope, it comes from the other side of the park as it delves into the lives and the psyches of the detectives in charge of solving the crime.
The film begins as the first body is discovered and the officer on the scene is detective Park Du-Man (Song Kang-Ho), which for me was the weakest link in the whole film as his acting was far from stellar, then again he isn't exactly here to portray the brightest bulb in the box. Du-Man is a cop out of his element, a cop whose attention focus more on silly ideas, planted evidence and torture as a means of getting bogus confessions. So, with that in mind, it is easy to give Kang-Ho's performance a break, especially considering he does get better as the picture moves forward.
Anyway, back to the killing, as I said Du-Man is the detective on the scene and there is not a single piece of evidence to point him in any direction. Not a hair, not a footprint, not a drop of semen as if it would help as at this time (1986) DNA testing wasn't available in Korea and they would have had to send their evidence to the States for testing. Therefore, this being the first crime of this nature in the area the cops are left scratching their heads and searching for clues while badgering those that knew the victim, hoping for something they could use to pin the murder on anyone, but as the bodies begin to stack up so does the tension.
Suddenly, tempers begin to flare and the line between sane and insane begins to blur. Park's partner Jo Yong-Gu (Roe-ha Kim) literally goes ape-shit and even the calm, cool and collected Seo Tae-Yun (Kim Sang-Kyung), a detective in town from Seoul to help with the investigation ultimately begins to lose his swagger.
Memories of Murder is a tense look at old school crime-solving and director Bong Joon-Ho has managed to piece together a captivating picture that only gets better as it goes on and never really ventures out of the dark hole it begins in.
As for this DVD release from Palm Pictures the only really interesting thing for me was the film itself. The DVD comes with an English dubbed track and the original Korean track as well as English subtitles. The feature begins without any setup with the English dub, but if you are any kind of movie enthusiast that just won't do and I quickly switched to the Korean track and subtitles, always a better outing. The only problem here is that the Korean track is Dolby 2.0 while the English dub, which sounds so stupid in my opinion) is in 5.1, a bad choice by Palm. It would have been much better served to ditch the English dub altogether and give us a better sounding Korean track.
In the special features department it is as it is with most releases from Palm or even Tartan for that matter as a bulk of the features rely on subtitled interviews with the cast and crew, this is something I am never interested in so I skipped it. There are however a good group of deleted scenes, which do add a bit to the value of the DVD, they are good and worth a once over.
Overall Memories of Murder lived up to what its trailer offered, a tense detective drama filled with moody atmosphere and dark undertones. The true payoff is the mature ending to the feature and the growth the actors show throughout the film despite their characters' ultimate disintegration.