Related article: The Power of Positivity: Ikorodu Bois + Chris Hemsworth + Russo Brothers + Sam Hargrave To compensate, Park takes the shoe of his first suspect, a mentally handicapped young man named Baek Kwang-ho (played by Park No-shik ), plants a new footprint, and takes a photo for evidence.īack at the police station, we are introduced to Park’s partner, detective Cho Yong-koo, played by Kim Roe-ha, who greets Baek with a powerful flying kick to the chest that sends the boy tumbling, while Park casually hands him a cozy for his boots that’s clearly used routinely to dampen the physical evidence of abuse. A footprint is left at the scene of the next murder but a tractor drives over it, ruining it. However, the cities developed at a much faster pace than the villages, such as the one in which this story takes place, and further conflict arises when a more educated, experienced, and honest detective named Seo Tae-yoon, played by Kim Sang-kyung, arrives from Seoul to help investigate.īecause the village people are poorly educated by developing standards, there is no system in place to deal with crime scenes, nor an understanding that evidence should be carefully dealt with. One of the upsides of living under the contemporary military dictatorship was that the economy developed rapidly, which modern Korean conservatives point to while reminiscing about “ the good old days. In humorous ways such as this, Bong pokes fun not just at an incompetent police force, but at the ways in which a rapidly developing society is at odds with the historically rural people. Some of the village children ruin the crime scene by playing with the dead woman’s clothes, and as Park yells at them not to touch, a little boy who’s been watching Park begins parroting his words, to his annoyance. The film begins with Detective Park investigating the body of a dead, violated woman who’s been stuffed into a drainage canal. The Times Are-a Changin’ Too Fast to Keep Up With Subscribe to Hollywood Insider’s YouTube Channel, by clicking here. Related article: MUST WATCH – Hollywood Insider’s CEO Pritan Ambroase’s Love Letter to Black Lives Matter – VIDEO In celebration of Memories of Murder recently becoming available to stream on VOD, I hope to shed some light on aspects of the film that are overlooked, so that future audiences may have a deeper appreciation for this rightfully-labeled masterpiece. However, without that knowledge, I believe much of the satire and social commentary, which Bong deftly weaves into the cop procedural, is lost. Nevertheless, the film has an enduring legacy, which speaks to Bong’s ability to craft a powerful narrative that’s independent of the social context. Detective Park Doo-man, portrayed by Song Kang-ho, is blatantly corrupt, and undoubtedly a satirical portrayal of the police of the time, yet I’ve read some reviews that simply characterize him as “a misguided cop who ultimately cares about justice,” which, to me, is almost like reading a review of Casablanca where the reviewer doesn’t know what Nazis are. My review of this film isn’t the first to exist, and it certainly won’t be the last, but I seldom see a review tackle the film from a historical perspective. Unfortunately, the historical and cultural context is almost entirely lost on Western audiences, yet it’s still regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Why am I digging up all this history? Well, because Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho’s crime drama about Korea’s first serial killer, takes place in 1986. Any one reported incident is but a drop in the bucket, but there is a rather famous incident in 1987 when 21-year-old university student Park Jong-chul was tortured to death during an investigation over his alleged anti-government activities, sparking what would be known as the June Democratic Struggle. Police brutality was also so widespread at the time that it became commonplace.
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