The Third Murder

As he proved with Air Doll (2009), Hirokazu Koreeda is capable of more than the intimate family sagas on which his reputation rests. But this Grisham-esque dissertation on the Japanese judicial system is less of a departure than it seems. The focus falls initially on attorney Masaharu Fukuyama's reluctance to defend factory worker Koji Yakusho on a charge of murdering and immolating his boss. However, Koreeda returns to his auteur theme of child-parent relationships as Yakusho keeps changing his story and Fukuyama begins to realise he is seeking to protect the deceased's wife (Yuki Saito) and teenage daughter (Suzu Hirose). Moreover, Fukuyama comes to reassess his own relationship with his judge father (Isao Hashizume), who wishes he had condemned Yakusho to death for a double murder three decades earlier. Working in CinemaScope for the first time, Koreeda explores the distances that exist between people in the most confined spaces, while also questioning Japanese legal procedures and the sanctity of life. The result is intriguing, but only fitfully engrossing.