On the one hand, this is very familiar stuff. You have a police procedural with a by-the-book cop and a gut-instinct cop. However, the South Korea setting makes this all fresh. There is political unrest in the background, and the police don't read people their Miranda rights. The actors are first-rate,, the plot is suitably twisty, and the film very dynamic.

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The nasty work of a serial killer in rural Korea--the film is based upon a real crime spree in Gyeonggi Province in 1986--is investigated by two very different crime-fighters. Detective Park (Song Kang-ho) is the local cop with skills that don’t quite match his pretentions. Convinced (incorrectly) that he can spot guilt by looking into the eyes of a suspect, he is happy to beat a confession out of a person so identified. Detective Seo (Kim Sang-kyung), on loan from Seoul, is a more modern sleuth. He prefers to examine the evidence carefully and go where the clues take him. Unfortunately, neither man makes much headway, and the murders multiply. A brief plot summary suggests a combination of American genres: the (mismatched) buddy film, the police procedural, the thriller. In the hands of director Bong Joon-ho, it is also, and mainly, a mood piece and an exercise in ambiguity, ambiguity that remains even after the detectives pounce on a likely suspect. The killer likes to kill in the rain, and the gloomy visuals often include rain or the soggy aftermath of rain. Also there are these dark tunnels, which seem to have no outlet, a motif that suggests both mystery and a dead end. Faced with a series of dead ends, beaten down by the maddening futility of their efforts, the detectives, especially Mr. Seo, gradually descend into an existential malaise and an obsession with the case that lasts long after it becomes “cold.” Of the many recent psycho-and-pursuer American films, the closest in tone and thrust to this excellent film is David Fincher’s “Zodiac” (also based on a true story), which was released four years after “Memories of Murder.” Both films begin as cat-and-mouse exercises and end, sadly, with a solitary, haunted cat.

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Good cinematography and story. Acting was adequate, but there was not enough believable emotion in the characters. Ending of the movie was fantastic and open ended.

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