IT IS customary in the serial-killer movie genre for most of the narrative to focus on a battle of wits. A cat-and-mouse face-off between detective and killer, the plot is usually as precise and clear-headed as an exhibition game of chess and, one suspects, has very little in common with an actual criminal investigation. The Korean cop film Memories of Murder is based on a real crime spree — South Korea’s first serial killer in 1986 — and, told almost entirely from the point of view of the police, it is unusually candid about the false starts and utter chaos of this particular case.

The investigating officers have no experience of modern police work, no access to vital resources such as DNA profiling. They veer between violently intimidating their suspects and acts of impossible credulity, consulting a fortune-teller at one point. With its narrative tangents and tail-chasing, the film evokes the confusion of the case. One policeman has to have a leg amputated after contracting tetanus, which is particularly poignant given his main job was to kick confessions out of the suspects.

Ultimately it has nothing to do with the main story, but the audience clings to this event, hoping it is a clue to some kind of resolution, much as the hapless detectives grasp at each false lead. The picture is both horribly, gorily fascinating and, it has to be said, slightly unfulfilling. Even in a film about the fallibility of homicide detectives it’s hard to suppress a twinge of disappointment that a tangible villain ultimately proves so elusive.

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