Memories of Murder / Salinui chueok

South Korea 2003

Dir: Bong Joon-ho

131 mins

Cast: Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung, Kim Roi-ha

Rating: MA15+

Memories of Murder, a 2003 thriller, marked South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s calling card to the world of cinema. It preceded The Host, a monster movie that garnered international attention, and his two more widely seen films, Snowpiercer and Okja. Memories of Murder, based on an actual serial killer case in Bong’s homeland, fit in with the police procedural fad that infected the 2000s. ...

Of Bong’s major films, Memories of Murder is the one least widely seen outside of Korea. And, although not as accomplished as Snowpiercer or Okja, it shows the seeds that would germinate with age and experience. ... Memories of Murder is in many ways more satisfying because of the complexity of the characters and the believability of how things turn out. By deviating from familiar formulas within an often-predictable genre, the film establishes itself as being worth the investment of time necessary to experience what it has to offer.

James Berardinelli, reelviews.net

Moving from atmospheric mystery to political allegory, with pit stops into slapstick comedy along the way, Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho’s second film, remains impossible to categorize. Newly restored and re-released, the director’s breakthrough feature (he would go on to direct The Host, Snowpiercer, and this year’s Okja, among other films) has lost none of its power to unsettle, and today it feels even stranger than ever. ...

How the hell does a film this tonally out there, with characters this lunkheaded and at times even cruel and hateful, manage to be so indescribably moving? Slowly, Bong makes the critical connection between these people and the repressive society they live in — one where violence is commonplace and where the very nature of reality is constantly in dispute. Toward the end, the questions being asked of witnesses and suspects start to feel more existential than specific — as if, as the cops get closer and closer to the facts, the less certain everything becomes. By the time the spellbinding and mysterious final shot rolls around, we’re left with this thought, the sad, mad truth of an authoritarian world: Nobody’s innocent, and everybody’s a victim.

Bilge Ebiri, Village Voice