NEON is excited to announce they will be releasing “Memories of Murder”, from Academy Award winning director, Bong Joon-ho. The digitally remastered film will be in theaters nationwide October 19th and October 20th for a two night limited theatrical engagement in partnership with Fathom Events. The special presentation of the film will include exclusive content plus a post-screening conversation with Bong Joon-ho and celebrated filmmaker Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Hot Fuzz).
“Memories of Murder” tells the harrowing true story of the hunt for a sadistic serial rapist and murderer terrorizing a small province in 1980s South Korea. Marking the first of many successful collaborations between four-time Oscar winner Bong Joon-ho and leading man Song Kang-ho, the film follows the paths of three increasingly desperate detectives as they attempt to decipher the violent mind of a killer in a futile effort to solve the case. Now, seventeen years after its initial release, and a year after the real culprit was identified, this cult classic takes its place as a
modern masterpiece.
Our take: Song Kang-ho as Park Doo-man proves once more why he is considered one of the top actors in the country, with his talent of being entertaining while cursing or hitting people becoming largely evident here… The cinematography by Kim Hyung-ku is spectacular, presenting images of rare beauty from the everyday life in the rural Korea of the 80's. “Memories of Murder” is a definite masterpiece, one of the films that established S. Korean productions at the top of the crime thriller genre. (Panos Kotzathanasis)
On the release of his 2003 film, Bong Joon-ho remarked “[This] case is an intertwined web of tragedy and black comedy—the eerie comedy that blooms within the air during the most absurd of times. The film is an uncanny, yet natural, mixture of horror and comedy because we were truly living in such times… I once threw my entire body and soul to create this film, and now my eyes are on how this film will plow through the long tunnel of time as it greets a new chapter in the fall of 2020 in the US.”
“We are so proud to be partnering with NEON to bring Academy Award® winner Bong Joon Ho's thriller Memories of Murder to US audiences for the first time since its original release in 2003,” Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt said, “Audiences will enjoy seeing the early work of this critically acclaimed director on the big screen.”
Memories of Murder marks NEON's second collaboration with Bong Joon Ho, following the 2019 Academy Award Best Picture winner, “Parasite“, which earned, in total, 6 Academy Award nominations and 4 wins. “Memories of Murder” continues the long standing relationship between Bong and NEON founder/CEO Tom Quinn, becoming the sixth film they've released together, following: “Snowpiercer“, “The Host“, “Mother“, and “Barking Dogs Never Bite”. Memories of Murder also marks the beginning of a new partnership with NEON and Fathom Events, as they look to release more titles in the future.
I love this movie. It haunted me for years until they finally caught the real killer. But now I wonder if that is the man they portrayed as the likely suspect in the film? Did it turn out that he was the killer and he walked for lack of evidence (DNA) and now will never serve time for those murders due to the statute of limitations? Or was that character in the film invented for the sake of drama? We know that it wasn’t just some country hick police department investigating those murders but rather hundreds of investigators/detectives on the case so details were changed for the sake of the film.
Whatever the case, it is a fantastic film that runs one through a gamut of emotions during its 2+ hour running time. It’s exhausting, in a good way.