Throughout South East Asia, the Koreans are often sniffily regarded as the boorish, garish neighbours who moved next door upon winning the lottery. While Memories Of Murder, Boon Joon-ho’s fictionalised account of the scattershot police investigation into Korea’s first serial killer, is brilliantly unsettling, it’s very unlikely to extricate South Korea from its unenviable duties as the butt of innumerable, undoubtedly hilarious ‘Paddy the Korean’ styled anecdotes.
The horrible, unsolved case at the film’s centre concerns a small, rustic town (think duelling komungos territory) where between 1986 and 1991, ten women were raped and murdered. The perpetrator was never found, but the police manhunt that ensued – imagine Se7en with corrupt Keystone Cops – raised graver concerns than any of the grisly deeds. Memories of Murder follows the investigating team of detectives – an inept bunch given to throwing chairs, using ‘fucker’ as a term of endearment, and frequenting the kind of karaoke bars that provide a sick-bucket at your table.
When the scattershot efforts of bumpkin cops Park (Kang-ho from the inspired Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance) and Cho (Rwe-ha) prove less than effective in tracking the killer, Seoul based detective, Seo (Sang-Kyung), is drafted in with predictably fractious results. But will Seo’s methodological ethos triumph where Park’s dubious sixth sense and shaman-consultations have failed? Well, no actually, for Joon-ho’s film cunningly subverts every convention of the serial killer sub-genre – the city auslander doesn’t have a civilising influence, the bizarre clues and numerous suspects are merely symptoms of desperation, and the more scientific approach is just as futile as the rural cops’ interrogative boot-in-the-face philosophy. Indeed, to underscore the point, one scene sees Park’s consultation with a fortune-teller and Seo’s rigorous trawl through police records lead them to the same erroneous suspect.
Ultimately, this is less a murder mystery than a satisfyingly unsatisfying existential comedy. The many poignant images of men running pointlessly, headlessly in the dark are played out against the decidedly Orwellian backdrop of late-’80s Korea, with its tumultuous street demos and paranoid curfews. But it’s the dreadful investigation that will probably have viewers emerging from the cinema and inquiring as to whether you’ve heard the one about the Korean police and the serial killer.