Confession of Murder: Tell-All to End All

Writer-director Jeong Byeong-gil's Confession of Murder kicks off with a deliciously absurd premise. A serial killer releases an autobiography just as the statute of limitations connected to his ten, maybe eleven, killings has come to an end — a mere 15 years! Evidently, in South Korea, such heinous crimes are forgiven quite quickly. So what's the conflict between the memoirist (Park Shi-hoo) who's making a mint off his bestseller and the police detective (Jeong Jae-yeong) whose girlfriend (Min Ji-ah) was perhaps the last victim going to be about? Will it focus on whether the cop can forgive the criminal? Or will it culminate in a shootout on a TV talk show? (Imagine the ratings boost! The fictional network certainly does!) Or will said victim's stiff-backed mother (Kim Yeong-ae), snake-handling father (Kim Jong-goo), histrionic brother (Choi Won-young) and archer sister (Kang Sook) beat the now-alcoholic officer to the punch? Is the cop's story merely a side story?

Before you take a frivolous and uneducated guess, you might as well also know... Confession of Murder's cast of characters also includes a creepily masked man (Jeong Hae-gyoon) who arrives out of nowhere late in the picture... What's he all about? And will he help ratings or hurt them? If you think the utter ridiculousness of the plot put me off, you're wrong. If you think it would put you off as well, I'd first ask you: How do you feel about really well executed chase scenes? Because Confession of Murder has a few of those. How do you feel about acrobatic stunts? Confession of Murder has a few of those too. Did you really fault the Die Hard movies for being implausible? I'm guessing, not. Speaking of which, I've never seen any of those. So how about this: You see Confession of Murder and I'll try one of those Bruce Willis blockbusters. Sound like a deal? Let me know in the comments below and you can consider my reply a virtual pinky swear. The more yeses I get the more movies I'll see from that five-part franchise. That said, I will not play the video games.