Critic Reviews

Though different in feeling from the Japanese writer-director's perceptive family tales like After the Storm, it has the same clarity of thought and precision of image as his very best work.

The Third Murder is a captivating puzzle.

Kore-Eda, writer, director and editor, an auteur in the full sense of the word, tunes his approach to the genre, but only up to a certain point.

The movie opens with the defendant bashing in the victim’s head and then burning the corpse. A trial seems almost beside the point, a view that the writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda goes on to dismantle with lapidary precision.

It’s the work of a contemporary master who arrives at the philosophical by way of the playful, ironic and lyrical.

In The Third Murder, as in his other films, Hirokazu Kore-eda informs tragedy with a distinctive kind of qualified humor that's realistic of how people process atrocity.

It will likely fall through the cracks a bit between “After the Storm” and “Shoplifters,” but it’s worth the time for fans of Kore-eda, a group that seems to be growing every day.

The Third Murder functions well as a topical genre detour for the acclaimed director, but a degree of incongruity between the demands of the procedural formula and Kore-eda’s usual languid pacing keep the film from reaching the upper echelons of his greatest work.

A consistently absorbing, often gripping, sometimes muddled whydidhedoit (because we already know whodunit), The Third Murder moves along Kore-eda’s customary careful, incisive pace, yet manages to be, for the most part, a riveting legal thriller.

The Third Murder may not be Kore-eda’s best work, but the film proves a satisfying challenge, a complex exploration of sin and righteousness in an amoral world.