Rating: 3.5/5
Criterion Challenge 2022 | 10/52 | 2000s
October 23, 1986 On the outskirts of a small town, children follow after Detective Park Doo-man, who rides in the back of an old car. The driver takes Park to the tied-up corpse of a woman rape victim in the water runoff drain. Park conducts interviews and collects testimonies, asking weird questions like if they thought the woman was hot. He believes that, by staring at their photos, he will be able to intuit who did it.
It happens again with another body, also raped and murdered, left in a remote field. A tractor drives over a footprint. The forensics team slips around, creating a mess. They collect evidence carelessly, allowing reporters to trample all over the crime scene.
Park visits a sex worker, who gives him a rumor about a boy with learning disabilities who followed one of the victims around. Park collects the boy, Baek Kwang-ho, and takes him to a back room.
A detective from Seoul named Seo Tae-yoon comes to assist in the investigation. Seo rides along with Park, who takes Baek’s shoes and shoves them in the mud where a footprint once was and photographs it as evidence. Park shows the photo to Baek and threatens him until he gets a confession out of Baek.
Meanwhile, Seo looks at the evidence to find a pattern in the killings. He calls Park’s methods into question, but not with any urgency. Will the two be able to work together and solve the murder?
The film follows the investigation — the ineptness, the corruption, and the desperation. Based on South Korea’s first serial killer case, the film captures just how unprepared the police were for a case like this.
Even after a thorough investigation, nothing
Bong Joon-ho is a director whom I have never connected with the way others have. I enjoyed Parasite, but it didn’t feel like the brilliant dissection of class that others claimed. Similarly, this does not feel like the incisive look at police corruption I’ve heard.
Part of my disconnect likely is not knowing Korean culture or history. But I’m also not as huge on Se7en or Zodiac, which are aesthetically and thematically similar to this movie.
Boon Joon-ho said in interviews that he wanted to solve the murder since it was unsolved when the movie came out and that his method was not too dissimilar from Park’s — looking at photos for a sign.
This movie is well made — it’s grim, sometimes engaging, and darkly funny. But it overstays its welcome without delving into its subject with sufficient curiosity.