This evocative South Korean masterpiece still hasn't received a fair chance in the West. In other words, it's a foreign motion picture that has yet to pierce the mainstream consciousness in the way that other Korean flicks like Oldboy and The Host have. And yet it might be a better movie than both of those; tight, gripping, creepy, strange and surprising funny - it's no wonder that Quentin Tarantino declared Memories of Murder as one of his all-time favourite films. Loosely based on events that swept the Korean countryside in the late 1980s, in which several women were found raped and murdered, Memories of Murder isn't as much about an investigation as it's about the exhaustion and frustration inherent to an investigation - especially at a time when forensics were unavailable. It's about as complex a police procedural as you'll ever find - one that both subverts and embraces its genre trappings.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
