A short while back, I remarked that there’s a class of movies I hesitate to review, those stories which depend on specific cultural facets of a culture with which I’m unfamiliar. This has now happened again, and again with a Japanese movie. However, unlike with the aforementioned Attack of the Mushroom People (1963; in Japan, Matango), with The Third Murder (2017) there is little doubt that this is a quality movie. I was unable to detect any technical flaws beyond the inevitable captioning, the acting was excellent, and the story fed information out in dribs and drabs, backtracks to correct information, until the audience is wondering just exactly what has happened – and why.
The story opens with the murder scene, as one man ambushes another in a river swamp, kills him, and burns the body. Swiftly caught, the man confesses and is assigned legal counsel. Feeling overwhelmed, counsel brings in help in the form of an up and comer with a reputation. We follow along as he and his team sniff after alternative explanations for the horrific crime, his possible motivations for committing the crime, finding ways to transmute the charges into non-capital charges, the victim’s wife and daughter, the killer’s offspring. Film technique is consistently abrupt, jumping from scene to scene, often leaving questions behind. Sometimes perspective is unorthodox, implying certain things about characters. The audience has to keep up, especially when we revisit the crime and now a teenager has been added to the little drama. Is this real?
The dialog delivery is often unhurried, especially when the legal team is interviewing their client in prison. In some ways, it reminded me of Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) in that the characters are internally wrestling with big issues as they interact with each other.
But just what might those issues be? Too often, I was perplexed. Why do the killer, the little girl, and the star defense attorney all swipe at their cheeks at different points in the film? Other questions, too nebulous to remember, came up as well. Why does the killer continually change his story? Is he really sitting in judgment of other people?
Or is he just looking for a final way out of a life that has treated him ill?
It’s a very well done movie, but whether it talks to you is an open question.
