Hirokazu Koreeda turns a courtroom into a puzzle box in The Third Murder, a 2020-dated legal drama that trades procedural comfort for doubt.
What is The Third Man Anton Karas about?
Defense lawyer Shigemori takes on the case of Misumi, a man with a prior murder conviction who has already confessed to killing his former employer. The confession should make the case straightforward, but as Shigemori digs into the details, inconsistencies pile up and his certainty about what actually happened erodes. The film follows the lawyer's growing unease more than it follows a chase for evidence, using the trial process itself as the engine of suspense.
About the cast
Masaharu Fukuyama plays the lawyer navigating the case, opposite Koji Yakusho as the accused man at its center. The ensemble includes Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Mikako Ichikawa, Izumi Matsuoka, Isao Hashizume, Suzu Hirose and Hajime Inoue, filling out the courtroom, the victim's family and the wider circle the investigation touches.
Context & significance
The film sits within Koreeda's run of dramas that examine Japanese institutions and family structures from the inside, here applied to the machinery of a criminal trial rather than a household. Crime, drama and mystery all describe the film accurately: it uses the shape of a murder case to ask how much a legal process can actually establish as true, and how much is agreed upon rather than proven. At 124 minutes, there's room for the courtroom scenes to sit alongside quieter exchanges between lawyer and client, and for repeated visits to the same set of facts that shift meaning each time they come up. Rather than building toward a single reveal, the film treats the trial itself as a place where memory, testimony and self-interest keep pulling in different directions, so the runtime is spent watching a professional relationship change shape under that pressure. It is a Japanese production throughout, made for audiences comfortable with a slower, dialogue-driven pace.
Watching The Third Man Anton Karas on Ktime
The Third Murder is available on K-Time with a free account login; the page itself is free to browse. K-Time carries the title with Persian dubbing, part of a catalogue built around Farsi-language access for Persian-speaking viewers everywhere, and no platform comparison is needed here — just an account and the film.