The Third Murder (2017)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Third Murder (2017) – H. Kore-eda

I think I remember hearing that Kore-eda’s The Third Murder (the film before his Cannes winning Shoplifters, 2018) was a big hit in Japan. It stars Koji Yakusho as Misumi, a man who has confessed to murdering his boss, a factory owner, which would be his third murder, as he was only recently released from prison after serving a sentence for killing two yakuza loan sharks 30 years earlier.  Masaharu Fukuyama plays Shigemori, the defence lawyer who digs deeper into Misumi’s case when the facts don’t really line up.  For most of its running time, Kore-eda delivers us a crisp legal thriller as Shigemori and his team interview various witnesses and potential accessories, following up every lead and discussing matters with the somewhat cagey or confused Misumi.  Shigemori even travels to Hokkaido where the earlier murders took place.  However, Kore-eda seemingly has a different goal than to just serve up a genre film – his real interest lies in making a case that the death penalty as deliberated in Japan is extremely problematic, primarily because there is social pressure placed on everyone to make the system run smoothly and efficiently and thus dissent may be suppressed.  In getting this point across, Kore-eda seems to leave the answer to the question of Misumi’s real motives ambiguous.  Another goal of equating Misumi and Shigemori -- both have daughters as did the murder victim – seems more in line with Kore-eda’s usual focus on family drama, but the dots aren’t fully connected here.  I suspect that Japanese audiences may have gotten more out of the film in its native language and context. Still, the film does reward those who want to think about it, after the fact.