Chastised by his superiors and openly ridiculed by his fellow officers, Han Suk-kyu, the sullen detective hero in Chang Yoon-hyun's cliché-ridden crime thriller Tell Me Something, seeks redemption for a massive blunder on his previous case. He's assigned to investigate a curious spate of serial murders in which the missing parts of three amputated corpses are found mix-and-match in garbage bags left in public places around the city of Seoul, waiting to be discovered. Han catches a major break early in the case when he discovers that Shim Eun-ha, an opaquely beautiful young woman, had relations with all three of the victims. That piece of information would seem to tighten the net quite a bit. But as Han, his veteran partner (Jang Hang-seon), and a special team of investigators empty out an entire gymnasium and spend long nights pensively sipping their coffees, Tell Me Something turns into a stealth satire of the most inept detective unit in South Korea. Based on the evidence at hand, the killer 1) knows Shim, 2) knows her well enough to know everyone she's slept with, 3) ordered the obscure preservative found slathered over the victim's bodies, 4) can amputate with the precision of a surgeon or a biologist, and 5) is a huge fan of the Placebo album Without You I'm Nothing. Short of a blinking neon sign over his or her head, these clues are the next best thing to a confession. In Han's defense, Chang and his team of co-screenwriters cough up enough suspects to fill an Agatha Christie novel, including Shim's long-lost abusive father, an obsessive friend who followed her to Paris and back, and Shim herself, whose enigmatic aura hints at plenty of hidden secrets. A gory, atmospheric mystery with more than a passing resemblance to Seven, right down to its frequent torrents of rain, Tell Me Something is more involving and evocative than most serial-killer knockoffs, but it makes the same key mistakes. What separates Seven from others of its ilk is that the killer's methods are not his madness, but part of his twisted moral purpose, one that ties into the film's hyper-realistic vision of modern urban rot. Chang cares too much about the pornographic details of the subgenre, like the body-part puzzlers or the garbage bags that explode like bloody piñatas. A huge hit in its native country, Tell Me Something may quell the desire for Hollywood imports, but that seems like a hollow victory.