Tell Me Something

Eastern Eye / Madman

R4 DVD

Korean with English subtitles

This title has been around for a couple of years now and I have finally caught up with it. It is a superb, gritty detective story in the Korean style – lots of blood and violence to a level that wouldn’t be tolerated now in the U.S.

Dismembered bodies are turning up, with a peculiar twist. The parts don’t all belong to the same body. There seems to be a serial killer at work. Lieutenant Cho, under suspicion for graft, is given the investigation. A quick result will do a lot to rebuild his credibility. A quick result is not going to happen, though. His investigations point to suspect after suspect and they keep turning up in bits. Suyeon Chae, a girl who has been involved with all the suspects and victims, is a logical suspect but even she must eventually be eliminated.

Since she knew all the victims and appears to know more about them than she is saying Cho places her under police protection. Now the killer seems to be getting closer to her and still the bodies are piling up. Cho is forming an attachment to her. Is this interfering with his judgment? Is he missing something?

Then one of the police officers in his squad gets too close and is killed. Cho is taken off the case. He won’t let go, though and continues his investigation quietly. When he finally cracks the case the results are not at all what he expected.

In spite of the bloodshed, the mortuary scenes and the violence as the killer strikes they are necessary to show the horror of the crimes. The Korean film industry doesn’t sanitise its films and as a result they look far more realistic than the super glossy American shows. This film is one of the better examples.

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