Saw Memories of Murder, a Korean crime film. It's apparently based on a real-life string of murders of women in rural Korea. The film is a sort-of buddy cop film where a slick big-city investigator is sent out to help the country bumpkins who are cute and personable but also very intent on closing the case, even if it means beating confessions out of suspects. This leads to a lot of false confessions, dead ends, and muddied waters. There's some little friction between the big-city dude and his small-town counterpart which is all wrapped up by the end of the film.
The ending of the film was very surprising to me. I'll spoil it here in white font if you're interested: the murderer is never caught and the mystery is never solved. If you do care about spoilers, of course I can't tell you about the ending, but have no fear: it's not all that shocking, just unexpected for what is otherwise a totally straightforward crime procedural.
The film also does some very interesting things with the country-cousin-cop. He claims to have a miraculous ability to read guilt in people's faces. He "proves" that he has this power a few times but each time the film lets us know that he's only hiding a clever observation. This proclaimed ability allows him to simply declare a man guilty and to rationalize the ensuing beatings-motivated confession. The theme of the film seems to be the frustration and injustice caused by petty corruption.
So okay, but did I like it? Unfortunately not really, no. I found it pretty drab and uninteresting. It's not bad, mind you, just a cop film. I've seen cop films before, this was not much different. Dead ends, clever realizations, thrilling chases, the same old same old. I didn't detect any deep themes about the human condition or anything. It's just a pleasant little waste of time. A bit of a miss for me alas, but not a bad film by any means.
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