Dark Figure of Crime: Serial Pleasures

One of these days, I should create a top ten list of South Korean movies about serial killers. With titles like Save the Green Planet, Memories of Murder, and I Saw the Devil, it's got to be one of the most successful sub-genres in this country's cinema and contains some of my favorite thrillers of all time. A potential contender for that list is Dark Figure of Crime, Kim Tae-gyoon's engaging suspense flick about a melancholic cop (Kim Yun-seok) who matches wits with a slippery-even-while-imprisoned criminal (Ju Ji-hun) whose unreliable confessions to multiple murders disguise a master plan to get out of jail. There are a handful of other characters like a jaded prosecutor (Moon Jung-hee), a diabetic police chief (Jung Jong-joon), and a loyal partner (Jin Seon-kyu) but ultimately this film is a two-hander which, to its credit, creates a hero every bit as interesting as its dastardly villain.

Part of the reason this movie's lead investigator is so compelling is simply the casting of Kim. The camera loves this actor whether he's playing a crime boss (The Yellow Sea), a community activist with a drinking problem (Punch) or even a rodent-faced gremlin (Jeon Woochi: The Taoist Wizard). But nothing seems to suit Kim so well as a world-weary cop, a role he'd previously nailed in The Chaser — another great serial killer pic by the way. There's so much intelligence and poignancy in Kim's timeworn face that you get an added pleasure from seeing this man, who you sense has received the short end of the stick throughout his life, ultimately aligned with good. The world needs more heroes and Kim's earnest detective here — who literally invests in the investigation with his own money — imparts a sense of good will that extends beyond the courtroom. If this widower can put his life on the line for justice, why can't we?