If I've learned one thing from recent Korean cinema it's this: if you are visiting the country - and I have an open invitation to do so in the near future from a Korean friend of mine - don't get arrested for anything. If by some misfortune you do and are approached by two detectives, one slim, one a little more portly, then don't whatever you do let them get you in a room alone with them. If movies are anything to go by, you'll have admitted to anything they choose to accuse you of by the time you come out.

Large detectives with slim partners who abuse those in their charge are becoming a regular feature of modern Korean police dramas - even the more seemingly civilised pair who visit the floating monastery in Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring seem to have this size/weight distribution thing going. A similar pair are at the centre of Bong Junon-ho's Memories of Murder, and although one of several familiar elements to be found in the film, it avoids both the heavy borrowings from western cinema found in Public Enemy and the overboard post-modernist visual trickery of Nowhere to Hide and puts a fresh spin on each and every one of them and integrates them seamlessly into a compelling and impressively realised whole.

The vast majority of police dramas seem to be set in the bustle of the city, where violent crime is more commonplace and where investigations can be frustrated by bureaucracy and non-co-operation can frustrate any investigation, criminals can be lost on subways and down alleyways, and cars can chase each other through traffic and red lights at pulse-raising speed. Based as it is on the true case of Korea's first recorded serial killings, Memories of Murder takes place instead in a rural district in the Gyeonggi province back in 1986 when the country was under military dictatorship.

It all kicks off when the body of a young girl, tied-up and abused, is found in a farmland drainage ditch. Local detective Park Du-man arrives to investigate and is frustrated to find the crime scene compromised and out of his control, a situation that also plagues the discovery of a second body a short while later. Into this world walks introspective, thoughtful, Seoul-based city detective Seo Tae-yun, who has taken an interest in the case and whose more studious working methods are initially scorned by Park and his partner Jo Yong-gu, but which soon turn up some useful and unexpected leads.

One of the many elements given a makeover here is the old story of a boy from the city bringing his working methods to country folk and meeting with local resistance, but right from the start this doesn't play as expected. Rather than trying to take charge, Seo requests a desk in the corner of the station house and silently observes his two new colleagues going about their business in their uniquely clumsy way. Park and Jo have their own particular version of the Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, in which Park coerces information from a suspect through a mixture of subtle intimidation, misdirection and faked evidence, and Jo simply kicks the living shit out of them. His assaults leave no tell-tale scuff marks on the suspect because of a cover that Jo wears over his shoe, a garment of patterned design that looks as if it was made for him by his mother. As a method of extracting confessions it is largely effective, but as a way of getting to the truth it is hopeless, as a week spent in the boiler room with these two would prompt you to admit to just about anything to get them to leave you alone. That Seo quietly despairs at this approach does not surprise, that he does not try to correct Park's behaviour but instead all but ignores him to carry out a solitary investigation does. This is especially evident in the early stages, where the film focuses primarily on Park and Jo, whose own dead end investigations are suddenly usurped when Seo pipes up and presents crucial evidence to the Chief that leads directly to the discovery of another body.

If it is somewhat inevitable that Park and Seo will eventually learn to work together, the journey to that moment is rich in sometimes glorious character detail and full of unexpected narrative side-steps, although the story never loses focus for a second, with even the smallest incidents in some way driving the plot forward. Character convention tells us that Jo will have to step aside in order for Park and Seo to work more closely with each other, but that Jo is eventually suspended for doing exactly what he has always done is an ironic twist, and the moment when Park looks mournfully at the patterned shoe-cover with which Jo used to pummel his victims is without doubt the film's most perversely poignant moment. Their work on the case transforms both detectives as they feed off of each other's personality traits - Park, it turns out, really does want to solve the case rather than just bang someone up for it, whereas Seo's frustration at the perceived failing of his own coda, "documents do not lie," vents itself in physical violence.

Serial killer stories have their particular (and perhaps perverse) fascination, and Memories of Murder is no exception here, but stands apart from others of its ilk by concentrating exclusively on the police investigation and by telling its story so bloody well, with all the necessary twists and surprises delivered with Swiss watch precision timing. Director Bong Joon-ho builds on this by suddenly shifting tone at unexpected moments, a technique that ensures you are never quite sure where the film will take you next. Thus character-driven scenes of police investigation give way to moments of comic hilarity (a brief scene in which Park, convinced the killer has no pubic hair, spends a day in a bath house eyeing up the genitalia of the other bathers), a genuinely scary sequence in which a potential victim runs for her life, only to have the killer leap up in front of her, and a breathless on-foot chase in which all three detectives pursue a man they believe is their killer, but who turns out to be a frustrated family man who was getting off by having a wank at one of the crime scenes.

Tonally the film bears all the hallmarks of a work by Japanese maestro Takeshi Kitano: the compression of information through economic editing, a gentle pace, oddball character detail, and an initially Joe Hisaishi-like score from Japanese composer Tarah Irashiwo. As a whole, though, despite being a very different film, it shares some surprising common ground with Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential, in its sudden and unexpected shifts in tone, in the timing of its narrative surprises, in its two very different central characters and the events that initially bring them to blows but ultimately unite them, and most of all in the sheer quality of its storytelling and technical handling. Where the two really part company is in the latter stages, with Bong staying true to the case on which the film is based, something studio pressure would probably not allow in a Hollywood take on the story.

The performances of all from the leads to the bit parts are bang on, with Song Kang-ho, who was so good in Park Chan-wook's extraordinary Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Boksuneon naui geot 2002), really shining as Park, his comic timing and sheer physicality (his first encounter with Seo, who he mistakes for a potential rapist, sees him land a very violent-looking two-footed drop kick square in the centre of Seo's chest) really working for a character that is engagingly likeable, occasionally very funny but sometimes frustrating in his almost loutish refusal to accept the opinions or work of others. This comes across particularly his treatment of policewoman Kwon Kwi-ok, whose key discovery regarding a song played on the radio he laughingly dismisses, then handing her his teacup in a gesture that almost casts her as the office domestic. Seo, on the other hand, not only takes her seriously, he effectively utilises her talents, asking her to conduct a key interview alone because he knows the distressed female witness will open up only to another woman. You can't help but feel that if Kwon returned to Seoul with Seo, she would very quickly become a detective of some standing herself.

As the quiet and reclusive Seo, Kim Sang-kyung does not really get to show his worth until the later stages, where his emotions finally boil to the surface and he has to confront the failings of the very system in which he has invested so much faith. In the final scenes, his anger and pain register all too clearly, but he never lets this slip into melodrama - it's a largely unshowy but very nicely judged turn that perfectly counterbalances Song's more brashly comical Park.

To integrate comedy into a thriller based on such a notorious real case, and make it work without ever diminishing the seriousness of the crimes is no small task, but to do so with the deftness Bong displays here is miraculous. This is partly achieved by ensuring that even when there is an absurdist element to the narrative - Park and Jo taking a break from beating up on a suspect to enjoy a meal and a favourite TV show with him, for instance - it never feels ludicrous, just a little eccentric, and always works for the character or story. A great excample of this occurs early on with a arresting steadicam shot that follows Park's arrival on the second crime scene as members of the forensic team fall arse over tit down a grassy bank and a farmer ignores Park's shouts and drives his tractor clean through a vital footprint - this is not staged purely for laughs, but to very effectively and economically outline the inadequacy of the local police force when it comes to handling a crime of this nature. That Bong interweaves scenes reflecting a time of political repression and change is interesting in itself, but once again he makes this crucial to the story, as when efforts to catch the killer are frustrated because the required manpower is diverted to suppress a demonstration elsewhere.

Memories of Murder is filled to the brim with such detail, but it is far more than just a collection of great scenes and engaging characters - it succeeds most of all because, like the aforementioned L.A. Confidential, they all meld into a tremendously well rounded, involving and entertaining whole, wonderfully played, beautifully photographed by Kim Hyeong-gyu, and directed with a confidence and style that must mark the then 34-year-old relative newcomer Bong as a director with a serious future ahead of him.

Sound and Vision