The Third Murder

It looks at first like an open-and-shut case: a factory owner has been murdered and an employee, Misumi (a brilliantly enigmatic Koji Yakusho), has confessed to the crime. But when a defense lawyer tries to establish Misumi’s motive, he wanders into a web of uncertainties that are not just factual, but existential. “People hardly understand members of their own family, let alone strangers,” says the lawyer’s father, a judge. A shift in genre for Kore-eda, this “captivating puzzle” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian) is also a pellucid investigation of themes that have concerned him all along: the mysteries and traumas of character, family, and fate.