‘Third Murder’ searches for elusive truth
Writer-director Hirokazu Koreeda, of the marvelous family-centric dramas “I Wish” (2011), “Like Father, Like Son” (2013), “Our Little Sister” (2015) and “After the Storm” (2016), returns to his favorite subject — sort of — with the philosophical crime drama “The Third Murder,” an offbeat 2017 effort opening today at the Brattle Theater.
The film precedes Koreeda’s 2018 effort “Shoplifters,” which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last spring.
Not a whodunnit, “The Third Murder” begins knowing the answer to that question. The murderer is Misumi (the great Koji Yakusho), an ex-con whose gruesome new crime we see in opening scenes set on the banks of the River Tama. Misumi has already confessed and been imprisoned. The goal now is to reduce his death sentence by retrying the case.
The three attorneys assigned to do this are led by the tall, handsome and well-tailored Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama, the young dad of “Like Father, Like Son”), this film’s Atticus Finch. Shigemori’s cohorts are an older former prosecutor (Hajime Inoue) and a young man (Shinnosuke Mitsushima) eager to prove himself. Did Misumi act on a grudge against his employer? Was the motive greed? Was he a killer for hire? Or is he just a lunatic?
Shigemori’s father (Isao Hashizume) is a retired judge with ties to Misumi. Will they influence Shigemori’s actions? The soon-to-be divorced Shigemori has a troubled teen daughter (Mikako Ichikawa). The “truth,” a word we hear over a dozen times, is indeed elusive. Among the other players in the existential pulp noir are the dead man’s wife, who may have had a role in her husband’s death, and his young daughter, who has a bad leg and was friendly with Misumi.
In a scene in which Misumi is separated from Shigemori by a spherical plexiglass barrier, the convict tries a kind of Jedi mind trick on his attorney. With its echoes of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Rashomon,” “The Third Murder” is tantalizing, and in the end, the truth may be as hard to grasp as a snowflake.
(“The Third Murder” contains mature subject matter and bloody and fiery violence.)