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| Source: Wikipedia |
Being a detective sucks anywhere in the world. Welcome to South Korean mid-eighties true crime, which translates to:
- It’s not North American.
- It’s gruesome, grueling, frustrating, and crushingly depressing.
- Typewriters, tape recorders, rotary dial phones, and godawful CRT-TV resolution remind us that technology evolves but people remain morons and/or bastards.
Not a happy story.
As spoiled by the tagline: expect zero closure. Escapists beware.
A rural police department tracks down a bad boy who likes to rape and strangle pretty girls. For a personal touch, he stashes various objects inside their body cavities. Like peach slices. In their, uh, peach slices.
Totally stumped, the detectives import a hotshot young detective from Seoul. This college-educated upstart introduces such revolutionary tactics as DNA testing, interviewing instead of torturing potential suspects, and reasoning from extant evidence.
Local cops ain’t down with that. They prefer the tried-and-true methods. Namely, relying on intuition to pick which suspect to torture for a confession. Conflicting tactics result in a clash of departmental priorities. But maybe the factions are more alike than they think. After months and months of failure, the easy way out looks more and more tempting.
A rural police department tracks down a bad boy who likes to rape and strangle pretty girls. For a personal touch, he stashes various objects inside their body cavities. Like peach slices. In their, uh, peach slices.
Totally stumped, the detectives import a hotshot young detective from Seoul. This college-educated upstart introduces such revolutionary tactics as DNA testing, interviewing instead of torturing potential suspects, and reasoning from extant evidence.
Local cops ain’t down with that. They prefer the tried-and-true methods. Namely, relying on intuition to pick which suspect to torture for a confession. Conflicting tactics result in a clash of departmental priorities. But maybe the factions are more alike than they think. After months and months of failure, the easy way out looks more and more tempting.
Being cops, the sort-of-heroes process a revolving door of disturbing characters, who may or may not have anything to do with the case. Battered witnesses, likewise.
For Western viewers, there’s an exotic setting. Karaoke, chopsticks, ear-cleaning, and Korean barbecue allay the depressing madness with learning about another culture. Unfortunately, we also learn their humans are just as flawed as ours.
Recommended for free-roaming psychopaths, closeted necrophiliacs, and the twisted masochists who lap up gritty realistic police procedurals.
127 minutes.
For Western viewers, there’s an exotic setting. Karaoke, chopsticks, ear-cleaning, and Korean barbecue allay the depressing madness with learning about another culture. Unfortunately, we also learn their humans are just as flawed as ours.
Recommended for free-roaming psychopaths, closeted necrophiliacs, and the twisted masochists who lap up gritty realistic police procedurals.
127 minutes.
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