The
Third Murder (2017): Written and directed by Hirokazu
Koreeda. Starring: Masaharu Fukuyama, Koji Yakusho, Suzu Hirose, Isao Hashizume,
and Mikako Ichikawa. Running Time: 124 minutes.
Rating:
3/4
Hirokazu
Koreeda has an established reputation of using his films to examine complicated
and troubled father/son relationships, most notably (and most explicitly) in
his 2013 masterpiece, Like Father, Like Son. Although the relationship
of the main character to his second to the film’s main plot, The Third Murder very much follows this
trend, where the inheritance of the past is a shadow over the present that one
can never fully abandon, however much one might wish to.
Shigemori
is a lawyer proud of his cold practicality in approaching his professional
life. He insists, repeatedly, that his
own thoughts and views on a case don’t matter.
All that counts is that there is a truth about each case, and this can
be presented or manipulated as needed to convince a jury of the desired outcome;
all else is of lesser importance. This
worldview, an inheritance of his distant and often dismissive father (who had
previously worked as a judge), runs straight into a brick wall when he is
handed responsibility for the murder trial of Misumi, whose constant altering
of his story befuddles him and his partner, forcing them to constantly shift
their strategy on the fly.
Shigemori
digs and digs, even traveling to the man’s hometown and paying visits to the
wife and daughter of his alleged murder victim, but everything he “learns” (or
rather, is told) only muddies the waters further. A series of twists regarding the man’s past
and his possible (but never confirmed) connection to the victim’s daughter
forces Shigemori to confront the boundaries of what he thought was real, and
what he assumed the nature of good and evil to be.
This
is the sort of character procedural that especially depends on its acting, and
the cast of this film delivers. Masaharu
Fukuyama mirrors much of the emotional distance he used to such great effect in
Like Father, Like Son, and his
opposite in Koji Yakusho as the alleged murderer is fascinating to watch as
someone who keeps contradicting what he said before, but somehow still manages
to sound firmly convincing each time he says something entirely different.
The
film is also heavily marked by starkly Christian imagery. Characters refer to themselves or others as “vessels”
for either good or evil, and question the nature of free will and how morality in
a person can be judged, subjects that are especially central to Christian
theology. Crosses appear in one form or
another throughout the film as well, ranging from a traffic intersection to the
leftover outline from where the murdered man was burned. Thought it may not have quite the deep power
of his last movie, but Koreeda’s latest nonetheless an excellent work that
leaves much room for thought and debate by the end.
-Noah Franc
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