Tell Me Something (1999)
Directed by Chang Youn-Hyun / Chang Yoon-Hyun / Yoon-Hyun Chang
Genres - Mystery, Crime, Thriller |
Sub-Genres - Police Detective Film, Post-Noir (Modern Noir) |
Release Date - Nov 13, 1999 (USA - Unknown) |
Run Time - 118 min. |
Countries - Korea, South |
MPAA Rating - R
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Synopsis by Jonathan Crow
This film opens with a young man arriving at an apartment and ending up on a concrete slab getting slowly dismembered with a scalpel by an unseen killer. That unfortunate soul, along with a number of other hapless victims, turns up in a bunch of plastic garbage bags littered around Seoul during Korea's steamy, rainy season. Burnt-out cop Jo (Han Suk-Kyu) is assigned to head up the investigation. The killer, who puts the limbs of a body with the corpse of another, clearly must have a basic grasp of surgery, Jo and his colleague Oh (Jang Hang-seon) quickly surmise. Their inquiry soon leads them to Chae Su-yeon (Korean idol Shim Eun-ha), a beautiful museum restorer who knew three of the victims. At first, she is wary and unresponsive. The cops' attention is briefly turned toward Kim Ki-yeon (Yu Jun-sang), an obsessive suitor of Chae who had not been seen for several days, that is, until a video tape surfaces of the missing man getting his legs lopped off. Later, as Chae begins to divulge the dark secrets of her past -- sexual abuse and the fiery death of a friend -- the body count grows and the murders become more gruesome. Director Chang Yoon-hyun's profoundly creepy "hardgore" thriller was a major box-office success in its native South Korea, matching that of Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace (1999).
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Keywords
brutality, dismemberment, murder, museum, police-investigation, serial-killer, video-tape