Movie Review: The Third Murder

The Third Murder ** / *****

Directed by: Hirokazu Koreeda.

Written by: Hirokazu Koreeda.

Starring: Masaharu Fukuyama (Shigemori), Kôji Yakusho (Misumi), Shinnosuke Mitsushima (Kawashima Akira), Mikako Ichikawa (Sasabara Itsuki), Izumi Matsuoka (Hattori Akiko), Isao Hashizume (Shigemori Akihisa), Suzu Hirose (Sakie), Hajime Inoue (Ono Minoru), Aju Makita (Shigemori Yuka), Yuki Saitô (Yamanaka Mitsue), Kôtarô Yoshida (Settsu Daisuke).

 

Hirokazu Koreeda is a legitimately great filmmaker – his latest film, Shoplifters, just won the Palme D’or earlier this year (it remains unseen by me at this time) – and he has a string of strong films stretching back 20 years on his resume. For the most part though, his talents lie in documenting the everyday activity of his subjects – they are often in very dramatic situations – the abandoned, homeless kids of Nobody Knows, the switched at birth families in Like Father, Like Son for instance – but Koreeda has never really felt the need to goose up the drama just for the sake of drama. His films take their time, but earn that time with the rewards the reap.

 

All of this is a way to say that the film he made between the wonderful After the Storm and before the Palme winning Shoplifters, called The Third Murder is easily the worst film of his I have seen. Here, Koreeda tries his hand at a courtroom thriller, but for some reason decides to keep everything paced at his normal, but slower pace. This makes the film deadly dull for most of its runtime – and it cannot be saved even with a few strong performances, and a scene late in the film that is striking for the way it shoots the two main characters literally face to face.

 

The movie opens with a murder – where we see Misumi (Kôji Yakusho) bash in the head of his boss with a wrench, and later we’ll learn he burned the body as well. By the time his lawyer, Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama) gets the case, it already seems like a lost cause – Misumi has already confessed, and that’s about that. But the question of motive really does become important in the film – Misumi first says he did it for money, but then changes his story. And this matters a great deal here – because a murder for money is viewed much more harshly than if it was a murder for some reason in the Japanese system. The question of why could literally be the difference between life and death.

 

All of this could have made for a fascinating film – and does, up to the point. The first hour, which basically focuses on Shigemori trying to unravel what happened, and why, is much more interesting than the second half – which is full of courtroom drama, but is also overly repetitive and basically grinds the film to a halt.

 

Koreeda is a legitimately great filmmaker – he is one of the filmmakers who most makes me think of Roger Ebert, who was an early champion of Koreeda for the film Maborsi – and liked many of his films until his death. Whenever I see one of his films, I wonder what Ebert would have made of it. But here, Koreeda tries to do something he normally doesn’t do – and while for certain filmmakers, that could lead to exciting, unexpected results, here it leads to a rather dull life, that has an interesting subject, but feels like its running on half steam the whole time. Still cannot wait to see Shoplifters though.