This is the second ever film by Bong Joon Ho, South Korean director of Parasite (and to a lesser extent, Mickey 17). I've been meaning to watch it for a while, and when Jami suggested it as a way to avoid watching some sci fi flick I'd suggested, I readily agreed. I think I hadn't watched it because it has kind of a gloomy reputation (just looking at that poster above should give you a hint), and while it's about a horrific topic (it's based on a real story of a serial killer who targeted women and defiled their bodies), and it certainly doesn't try to lessen the horror, its frank portrayal of some of the rank amateurism (not to mention outright abuse) of the cops involved leads to some laugh-out-loud moments. Putatively our protagonist, to whom we are introduced right at the outset, is Detective Park Doo-man, played by chubby-faced Ho stalwart Song Kang-ho (although in body he's quite slender in this one). He has been called to the site of the first corpse, found in a covered drainage ditch out in the fields. (The whole film is set in rural South Korea, and the actual murders were the firsts murders in that part of the country.) The place is swarming with kids, whom he has to shoo away, particularly as they discover the woman's underclothes nearby and start playing with them. In fact, disturbance of the crime scene by hicks and gawkers is a running theme - at the site of the second corpse, a tractor runs over the only footprint on the scene. Park has a thuggish sidekick, Detective Cho Yong-koo, whose job it is to beat suspects until they confess, one he clearly relishes (until one of them later fights back, to maiming effect).
They are shortly joined by a competent Seoul detective Seo Tae-yoon,
who, while clearly contemptuous of their methods, makes no attempt to intervene, but just tells them as they cart the suspect off that he's not the one. An early suspect is the mentally disabled adult son of the local tavern owner (where they often hang out, eating meat and drinking beer), whom they bully and abuse into confessing,
and take him out to the site of the murders to re-enact them.
He does reveal some facts that he shouldn't know, but he also has a bodily quirk that absolves him. Their second main suspect is the cause of one of the laughest-out-loudest moments in the film, when the two hick cops are at the scene of the latest murder with a kind of magic they've bought from a shaman (seriously - it's very hard to respect them) when they see the city cop coming and hide, and then he sees somebody coming and he hides, and it turns out to be our suspect. So we have three groups, with only our thuggish pair aware of all of them. And then Cho steps on a twig...
Anyway, suffice to say that, while he also confesses after abuse, he is not their man. It takes an observation from the one female cop on the force
to help them track down their most promising suspect, one who will test Seo's resolve to do things the right way.
There is also a great older boss whose exasperated reactions to the bickering, especially between Park and Seo (their relationship got off to a bad start when Seo, clearly dropped off near town approaches a woman to get directions, at which she screams, runs, falls down a hill and he's helping her up when Park drives by and thinks he's attacking her and attacks him) provides comic relief. There's also a girl's school, and two schoolgirls in particular who both help and hinder them. And lots of shots of rain (the murders all take place in the rain), and one scene in particular that is blood-chilling, as we see a victim stalked and caught.
Overall, it's truly an excellent film. I thought Zodiac was amazing, but having seen this earlier film, I can't help but think that it was hugely influential on that one. Apart from the killer, everyone in this film is so normal and alive and fallible that it just brings everything home. I'd even rate it higher than Parasite, but that might be recency bias. The penultimate scene teeters on the edge of melodrama
(and is the only time in the film where there's any intrusive music), but the film saves it with a very affecting coda/bookend (which fits with the film title).
See it if you have any affinity for police procedurals, as it's an all-timer. The two hours fly by and you realize that you've been holding your breath for most of it.
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