Movie

Memories of Murder

Name: Memories of Murder
Released: 2003

2003 • Crime, Drama, Mystery

Woke Score

3.4

out of 10

Plot

In 1986, in the province of Gyunggi, in South Korea, a second young and beautiful woman is found dead, raped and tied and gagged with her underwear. Detective Park Doo-Man and Detective Cho Yong-koo, two brutal and stupid local detectives without any technique, investigate the murder using brutality and torturing the suspects, without any practical result. The Detective Seo Tae-Yoon from Seoul comes to the country to help the investigations and is convinced that a serial-killer is killing the women. When a third woman is found dead in the same "modus-operandi", the detectives find leads of the assassin.

Overall Series Review

Memories of Murder is a 2003 South Korean crime thriller that immerses the viewer in the frustrating search for a serial killer during the country's turbulent 1980s. The film uses the investigation as a vehicle to critique the corrupt and incompetent institutions of its setting. The plot follows two local, brutal, and unscientific detectives clashing with a meticulous, rules-based detective from the capital city. The central themes are the failure of the police state, the moral decay inherent in an authoritarian system, and the chilling concept that true evil can look utterly ordinary. The narrative’s focus is regional and historical, concentrating on a specific era of South Korean institutional failure. The police are systematically portrayed as incompetent and reliant on torture, demonstrating a critique of the nation's own recent past. Female characters are often victims, but the few women in the investigation are shown to be the source of crucial, yet ignored, intelligence. The movie’s primary critique is political and systemic, not based on Western identity politics or progressive sexual ideology.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The film’s focus is on class/regional competence (local vs. Seoul police) and systemic corruption, not race or intersectional hierarchy. All characters are ethnically Korean, reflecting the film's regional setting and source material. Character conflict is based on methodology and moral choices (brutality vs. science), not immutable characteristics or race-baiting.

Oikophobia6/10

The movie is an explicit and unrelenting critique of South Korean institutional failure during the 1980s authoritarian regime. The local police force, an institution of the home nation, is framed as fundamentally corrupt, incompetent, and violent, constantly relying on torture and contaminating crime scenes. This deconstruction of the national police and the authoritarian government of the era represents a clear hostility toward the *home* political and societal heritage.

Feminism4/10

Women are central to the plot as victims of heinous crimes. The men who lead the investigation are consistently depicted as bumbling, aggressive, and toxically incompetent, often achieving nothing but torturing the wrong suspects. Female characters, such as the single female officer and a young girl, are shown to possess key observational intelligence that the men dismiss or ignore, effectively framing masculinity within the state as a source of failure and violence. However, the narrative is not focused on career fulfillment or anti-natalism.

LGBTQ+1/10

The narrative adheres strictly to the normative male-female structure inherent to the serial killer's motives. There is no presence of alternative sexualities, queer theory, or discussion of gender ideology. Sexuality remains private and a component of the crime, not a political or ideological statement.

Anti-Theism4/10

The core theme involves a spiritual and moral vacuum where the killer escapes justice and the police's moral authority crumbles under their own brutality. This moral relativism and absence of objective truth (the killer is never caught) forms a bleak worldview. However, there is no direct hostility, vilification, or attack on organized religion, such as Christianity, within the story.