In 1986, in the province of Gyunggi, in South Korea, a second young and beautiful woman is found dead, raped and tied and gagged with her underwear. Detective Park Doo-Man and Detective Cho Yong-koo, two brutal and stupid local detectives without any technique, investigate the murder using brutality and torturing the suspects, without any practical result. The Detective Seo Tae-Yoon from Seoul comes to the country to help the investigations and is convinced that a serial-killer is killing the women. When a third woman is found dead in the same "modus-operandi", the detectives find leads of the assassin. In a small Korean province in 1986, three detectives struggle with the case of multiple young women being found raped and murdered by an unknown culprit. After hearing unanimous rave reviews about the highest grossing Korean movie thus far (domestically I think) I had my hopes unrealistically high. The narrative was pretty good but I found the characters too much like caricatures and the events loosely based on reality were too overdone. This may be coming from my bias against buddy cop movies - I've seen way too many of them and really dislike them in most cases. Anyway, you have the local cops that beat up suspects just to get a confession and have a difficult time listening to the reason of the analytical big city detective. The one local cop that was so prone to violence seemed to lack the dimension of being much more than "the bad cop" or the sidekick. Meanwhile, the "good" local cop was pretty likable but his stubbornness not to follow the leads but to rather look for baldies or waste time torturing the suspects was a bit amusing but frustrating. The competition and jealousy and fighting with the city cop got old I thought and I felt the film focused too much on this "this is my turf" aspect of their relationship like rush hour or something. The city cop's change in his tactics also felt rushed and the tunnel scene near the end was just overtly melodramatic.<br/><br/>I had the same problem with Taegukgi, another Korean blockbuster in that both of them dealt with a great setting, had some real thrilling scenes and were filmed superbly but just had tacked on overtly melodramatic and "wow what a crazy coincidence" type unrealistic situations to be taken seriously. Especially considering that this is based on real events. An example is that the girl that lead to the bathroom lead and who the city cop put the band-aid on ended up a victim, or that the guy gets hit by a train before they can get truthful info out of him, and other examples that may be nitpicky.<br/><br/>Also I guessed that the scar guy was a witness and that the girl's lead was the best one waay earlier than the detectives did, I thought the first point was a little obvious early on. I really must fault a movie that makes me guess key parts before the detective does, I don't wanna feel that smart in a who-dun-it, I wanna be completely baffled! I'm not asking for some insane "that character is a figment of your imagination" twist (even if those are fun!) but just for enough subtlety to keep me questioning, not yelling at the detectives what's going on like "He's speaking in the third person!!! GAH!!!" Also I'm not sure whether it was designed but I laughed at the the beatings way more than I ought to have- I didn't feel seriously outraged until the guy hit the girl in the bar, the rest of the beatings seemed like playful big brother beatings or something.<br/><br/>Anyway, I felt the movie was effective in the story-telling but it's the only highly touted Korean movie I've seen in which I took nothing away from. Sure it had characters who were split morally but I took away just about as much as this as I would a CSI episode (which I don't like anymore) The cinematography was really good yeah but the other great Korean movies I've seen have made me think and genuinely feel so much more (Save the Green Planet, Oldboy!, 3-Iron, Samaria, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and A Tale of Two Sisters are all top-25 movies for me) For this I was just like "awww gross, peaches?" and "that damn psycho bastard". The only moment I really felt and went "WOW" was when the killer was whistling in the field before tackling his victim- that and scenes similar to that warrant the acclaim. But otherwise this is just, to me, like a good mainstream Korea movie. I give this a 6.5 maybe 7ish on a good day - good use of the story, but thats all this movie is to me - a story with good thrills, the gross out factor and an efficient use of formula-inspired twists to entertain. This movie was very tense and sary. The mystery throughout it all kept me hooked. It got me into Korean movies. As exciting for its narrative twists and turns as for its Korean textures and rhythms.
Olivaolye replied
295 weeks ago