Our Town aka Uri dongne
Running time: 112 minutes
Directed by: Gil-yeong Jeong
Starring: Man-seok Oh
IMDB rating: 6.3
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1201168/
Our Town begins with a girl's body discovered, hung up in a Christ-like position in a park. It's revealed that this is not the first case of its kind, and the police are hunting the serial killer responsible.
Kyung-ju is a crime novelist. Or at least he'd like to be. Despite his best efforts, his story of a serial killer is rejected by publishers and his debts are piling up. With his frustrations rising, he goes out to lunch with his best friend, who turns out to be the cop in charge of the murder investigation.
I thought that this was a pretty solid offering. It's by a first time writer-director, and this is probably why it has a few structural flaws, but feels fresh and different despite the basic subject (serial killer investiation) being one that's been seen many times before.
I liked that the story was original. Rather than a typical police-hunts-killer/whodunnit, we find out who the killer is before the halfway point, and the main characters are not just carbon copies from other films.
On the negative side of things, there are several flashbacks, each showing a key event from the past, which reveals previous interactions between the main characters. Flashbacks are not inherently bad, but the problem in this instance is that you're not certain who each young child/teenager is, and this makes things a bit confusing. Another issue is that while it mostly explains the motivations of one character, it creates more questions than it answers.
7/10