Hirokazu Koreeda is best known for intimate family dramas that overseas critics often compare to the work of Yasujiro Ozu (1903-63), the genre¡¯s unquestioned master. Koreeda rejects these comparisons, however, and says he feels more of a cinematic kinship to Mikio Naruse (1905-69), one of Ozu¡¯s contemporaries.
Koreeda¡¯s films ¡ª ¡°Still Walking¡± (2008), ¡°Like Father, Like Son¡± (2013) and ¡°After the Storm¡± (2016) ¡ª constitute a spiritual autobiography that reflects the 55-year-old filmmaker¡¯s own family history and experience with fatherhood. But his latest, ¡°The Third Murder,¡± is a courtroom drama centering on a slippery lawyer (Masaharu Fukuyama) and an enigmatic ex-convict (Koji Yakusho) accused of murdering his former boss. It¡¯s Koreeda¡¯s first outing in the genre and would seem to be an outlier in his filmography (though he has waded into other genres before: postdeath fantasy ¡°After Life¡± in 1998 and period comedy ¡°Hana¡± in 2006). Yet familiar Koreeda themes are found in ¡°The Third Murder,¡± beginning with the two leads who struggle as fathers.
Koreeda, who wrote the film¡¯s original script, says one of his prime motivations in this case was to probe the depths of the Japanese justice system, particularly the process of how it hands down judgements.
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