Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder is one of the most important and impactful crime thrillers of all time. The film is based on South Korea’s first serial murders that shook the country in the late 1980s. Before killing the victims, the serial killer sexually abused and raped the victims. However, the country was being ruled by the military dictator Chun Doo-hwan during that time. There was no proper investigation system in the country and confessions would be obtained from the innocent civilians forcibly. The criminal investigation and justice systems were completely messy. So, the detectives were not able to catch the serial killer, and he kept on committing rapes and murders. He was caught only after more than thirty years in 2019. Filmmaker Bong Joon-ho has portrayed these horrific rapes and murders in Memories of Murder in a grotesque way keeping a critical eye on the country’s military dictatorship during that time.
Memories of Murder starts on 23rd October 1986 when a South Korean detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho) comes to investigate two rapes and murders committed in a rural area near a small town. However, the crime scenes are completely messy and evidence is not collected properly. The forensic team is also not well-established. Obtaining confessions out of innocent civilians is a common practice. Detective Doo-man proclaims that he can identify a criminal just by looking at the criminal’s eyes. His assistant Cho (Kim Roi-ha) is a kick master. They arrest a mentally retarded boy named Kwang-ho.
A young detective named Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung) who possesses much more knowledge about modern interrogation techniques and equipment voluntarily agrees and comes to investigate the double rapes and murders. He immediately realizes that a mentally retarded and weak person like Kwang-ho wouldn’t be able to commit such heinous crimes. He can’t even stretch his fingers properly. Detectives Doo-man and Cho rehearse the fabricated dialogues with him but when Kwang-ho is taken to the crime spot in the presence of national media for recreating the incident, his father appears there and Kwang-ho breaks down in tears. Tae-yoon thoroughly analyses both murders and concludes that the murderer strikes only on rainy nights and attacks women with red clothes. The female officer Miss Kwon comes up with a conclusion that the same song titled Sad Letter was played on the local radio station on the nights of both murders. The killer strikes again and murders a woman. Doo-man, Tae-yoon, and Cho visit the crime spot the next night as killers always return to the crime spots. They see a man masturbating there and chase him. After an immense chase, they recognize him by his underwear and arrest him from the nearby gypsum mine.
As usual, Doo-man and Cho obtain his confession forcibly. However, the man’s description of the crime does not match with the real event. Like two school girls, he too mentions a mysterious man coming out of the outhouses on the school campus. Tae-yoon visits the school campus and comes to know that a recent victim of the serial killer stays up the nearby hill and cries always. He meets the girl and gets her version recorded. She categorically mentions that the serial killer has soft hands. Tae-yoon checks the arrested man’s hands and immediately realizes that he is just a mine worker with tough hands and not the real killer. Tae-yoon releases the mine worker when an intense fight breaks out between Doo-man and him. Suddenly, they all realize that it’s raining now and the radio station is playing the same song. So, the serial killer is about to strike again. The investigation bureau chief requests more forces, but his effort goes in vain as the forces have already been deployed to suppress a public demonstration. Unfortunately, the killer strikes again. The female detective Miss Kwon tracks down the song requestor’s address from the postcard he sent to the radio station. His name is Park Hyeon-gyu (Park Hae-il), and he works in the nearby gypsum factory. They arrest him from there and start interrogating him.
Tae-yoon touches his hands and finds out that they are soft, which intensifies his suspicion. However, they are yet to get any concrete evidence of his crime. Doo-man and Tae-yoon rehear Kwang-ho’s audio recording and conclude that he must have seen the serial killer. When they come to his father’s restaurant to investigate him further, he runs away in fear and gets run over by a speeding train. Cho’s leg gets amputated because of a tetanus infection formed due to Kwang-ho’s attack on his leg with a rusty nail during a fight in the restaurant. The latest victim’s cloth, which has semen on it, is sent to the USA for a DNA test. On another rainy night, the killer strikes again and kills the schoolgirl whom Tae-yoon met earlier. Being utterly enraged, he beats Hyoun-gyu severely beside a tunnel when Doo-man arrives with the DNA report from the USA. The semen sample does not match Hyeon-gyu’s DNA. In extreme frustration and disbelief, Tae-yoon points his gun toward Hyeon-gyu but Doo-man pushes the gun while Tae-yoon is about to press the trigger. Hyeon-gyu is saved and allowed to leave through the dusky tunnel.
Now Memories of Murder fast forwards to 2003. Doo-man is no longer a detective now. He is a businessman and father. While passing through the location of the 1st murder, he stops by and looks at the crime spot. A girl informs him that she has seen a man there before. Doo-man asks her what the man looks like. The girl replies that he looks like an ordinary man. An astonished Doo-man stares into the camera.
Filmmaker Bong Joon-ho set Memories of Murder on the backdrop of South Korea’s military dictatorship. Multiple incidents in the film reference the ill effects of the military regime. Bong Joon-ho clearly shows that everything can’t be perfect in a dictatorship as it is not possible for a single human to excel in everything. So, multiple times, the regime forcibly tries to suppress ordinary citizens and their rights. In the first scene of Memories of Murder, children are seen playing with the victim’s clothes just a few meters away from the crime spot. They are not afraid or panicked. It clearly indicates that they are habituated with corpses. Rapes and murders seem to be daily affairs and there is nothing astonishing in that. This shows the complete breakdown of law and order. The detectives are not equipped with modern investigation techniques and tools. Innocent civilians are tortured to confess the crimes they are in no way associated with.
Everywhere, there is a mockery of the justice system. Taking advantage of this mess, the serial killer keeps striking the innocent helpless women and the detective department keeps failing to arrest the criminal. When the investigation bureau chief asks for more forces, his request is declined as the forces are busy suppressing the public demonstration. Chaos is everywhere. When the serial killer lifts a woman and takes her to the jungle, a civil defense drill is announced and people shut down their houses and shops. All the lights are switched off and the area gets filled with terrible darkness. Amid the never-ending darkness, the serial killer rapes and murders the woman. Bong Joon-ho has vividly shown the intense public apathy and terrible state of affairs under the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan. It is no surprise that the investigation bureau was not able to track down the criminal in the next thirty years since the first murder was committed.
The ending scene in Memories of Murder carries much significance. The girl present at the 1st murder crime spot informs Doo-man that she has seen a man there before. When Doo-man asks the girl what the man looks like, she replies that he looks like an ordinary man. Through this scene, filmmaker Bong Joon-ho has pointed out a very important truth that criminals look like normal humans, live like normal humans amongst us in normal localities and residences, eat the same food, and roam around in the same places. But, behind this normalcy, lie the monsters who commit heinous crimes without any remorse. The real serial killer Lee Choon-jae was not caught when the film was released in 2003. So, filmmaker Bong Joon-ho shows that Doo-man breaks the fourth wall and directly stares into the camera. This signifies that he is staring at the viewers, the real world where the unknown and unidentified serial killer is living amongst us.
Another important aspect of Memories of Murder is the similarity between the prime suspect Hyeon-gyu shown in the film and the real killer Lee who confessed his crime in 2019. Both served in the South Korean military, worked in a construction factory, stayed in the nearby village, and looked handsome. But, the film was released 16 years prior to Lee’s confession. This shows filmmaker Bong Joon-ho’s supreme level of excellence in meticulously capturing all the necessary details in the film. He could visualize the replica of the real killer 16 years prior to his identification and confession.
Memories of Murder is one of the most impactful, painful, and influential crime thrillers ever made. It is very difficult to believe that it is actually director Bong Joon-ho’s second film. The film was made so skillfully that it looks like the work of a film veteran. There is no denying the fact that Bong Joon-ho is a great filmmaker and craftsman. He wanted to make his second feature film much like the Korean crime thrillers of the olden days, which are emotional and humane. He wanted to avoid Hollywood-style plot-driven crime dramas. So, Memories of Murder looks more real than cinematic. He sets the film on the backdrop of Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship and points out its ill effects on South Korea’s criminal investigation and justice system. He made the film with an intense critical eye on the country’s policing and judicial systems in the late 1980s.
The film is based on Come to See Me by Kim Kwang-lim. The screenplay written by Bong Joon-ho himself and Shim Sung-bo is humourous in the first half but utterly serious in the second half. It meticulously covers the heartwrenching serial rapes and murders that shook the entire country in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Even though the film is based on the rapes and murders of women victims, Bong Joon-ho does not exploit the women’s bodies in the film for commercial success. He used women in the most crucial roles in the film. The female detective Miss Kwon is a worthy officer who discovers that the same song was played at the radio station on the nights of the murders. She helps the investigation bureau to track down the address of the serial killer. The witness of the serial killer in the last scene is also a woman.
Filmmaker Bong Joon-ho wanted natural acting in the film. So, he mostly avoided the regular rehearsal process. This creates both freshness and awkwardness on the screen. When Doo-man meets Tae-yoon for the first time, he gives him a flying kick in the bush. In reality, Song Kang-ho and Kim Sang-kyung also met for the first time during that scene. So, it was depicted on the screen as quite real and natural. Bong Joon-ho also masterfully executed the ensemble staging on the screen for a few scenes instead of cutting dialogues from one actor to another. This gives focus and importance to all the actors at the same time. One such scene is when Doo-man, Tae-yoon, the bureau chief, and Cho assemble in the restaurant. Kang-ho brilliantly portrays the comical part of Doo-man that enriches the film with much sarcasm. In the role of a serious detective, Sang-kyung is brilliant and incredibly convincing as Tae-yun. All the actors play their roles quite naturally and effortlessly.
Kim Hyung-koo’s cinematography portrays the bleak atmosphere of the film on the screen. Filmmaker Bong Joon-ho and cinematographer Hyung-koo went with the bleach bypass process which created the desaturated dull and bleak look of the film. Bright yellowish color is used only for the first and the final scenes in which the vast paddy field is shown on the screen. In multiple scenes, Hyung-koo uses dynamic hand-held cinematography. The scenes when the serial killer attacks the victims terrify the viewers. There is an incredibly skilled long track shot in the film when Kwang-ho is taken to the crime spot across the vast paddy field and his father appears there to counter the detectives. Bong Joon-ho and Hyung-koo shot the rainy scenes while it was actually raining so that the scenes looked real. They would wait for hours if it did not rain during the filming time. Hyung-koo’s dynamic cinematography is rightly complemented by Kim Sun-min’s dynamic editing. The attacking and chasing scenes were edited incredibly skillfully. Taro Iwashiro’s piano-based melancholy background score creates such an intense influence on the viewers that they remember multiple scenes through the music long after watching the film.