A complete mess. Overlong, boring and offering no resolution, this film is more than bad; it's an embarrassment. That it's been so highly praised internationally is the kind of "affirmative action" pandering that occasionally strikes film festivals; it's success at home just confirms Koreans flock to bad movies too.
The major responsibility of a director is to present a movie that is of a piece, that is, it is unified as a story in tone, time and place, and offers a believable and interesting plot. This movie is all over the place tonally: it has moments of madcap wannabe Jackie Chan-style buffoonery with Three Stooges-level relationships among the leads, offers serious policier pretensions for most its second half. As for running time: the whole thing is incredibly long, all the more so for a film that offers no real suspense, no threat to its protagonists and clues that come out of nowhere, like the female officer's sudden, out-of-the-blue discovery that a certain song is played whenever the murderer strikes. (And we're asked to believe that these cops are dimwitted enough to think that the murderer himself may have requested the song with a postcard that gives his accurate name and address!)
It doesn't matter that the movie is built on a true case. So what? You don't go and make a movie about an unsolved crime unless it offers some other insight other than the banal idea that the serial killer-rapist could be anyone (which of course isn't true; we're not all killers). After slogging through an interminable running time, to then be offered no resolution (even after a meaningless flash-forward to ten or so years later) is an anticlimax of the worst kind.
An absolute piece of total pretension with bungling characters and lousy story-telling (e.g., the retarded suspect obviously has been an eyewitness to a killing but the cops realize this two hours after you will), this movie may sour you for other, good Korean films. Don't let that happen.
The major responsibility of a director is to present a movie that is of a piece, that is, it is unified as a story in tone, time and place, and offers a believable and interesting plot. This movie is all over the place tonally: it has moments of madcap wannabe Jackie Chan-style buffoonery with Three Stooges-level relationships among the leads, offers serious policier pretensions for most its second half. As for running time: the whole thing is incredibly long, all the more so for a film that offers no real suspense, no threat to its protagonists and clues that come out of nowhere, like the female officer's sudden, out-of-the-blue discovery that a certain song is played whenever the murderer strikes. (And we're asked to believe that these cops are dimwitted enough to think that the murderer himself may have requested the song with a postcard that gives his accurate name and address!)
It doesn't matter that the movie is built on a true case. So what? You don't go and make a movie about an unsolved crime unless it offers some other insight other than the banal idea that the serial killer-rapist could be anyone (which of course isn't true; we're not all killers). After slogging through an interminable running time, to then be offered no resolution (even after a meaningless flash-forward to ten or so years later) is an anticlimax of the worst kind.
An absolute piece of total pretension with bungling characters and lousy story-telling (e.g., the retarded suspect obviously has been an eyewitness to a killing but the cops realize this two hours after you will), this movie may sour you for other, good Korean films. Don't let that happen.