Film / Memoirs of a Murderer

"If the law cannot touch him, we will try him."

"The statute of limitations ran out on the Tokyo Strangler murders. Finding the killer won't get back lives or lost time. But it's our duty to cast light into the darkness."

— Toshio Sendo

Memoirs of a Murderer is a remake based on the South Korean film, Confession of Murder. It was released on the 10th of June, 2017.

In 1995, the "Tokyo Strangler" suffocates 5 people, drawing the attention of the police. After countless attempts to expose him, the 15-year statute of limitations passes in 2010, protecting the criminal from conviction and abruptly shutting down the police's investigation. 7 years later, a man named Masato Sonezaki (Tatsuya Fujiwara) publicly comes forward with a memoir about his crimes, revealing himself as the killer. The media believes him, making Masato an overnight celebrity. In response, the detective who failed to arrest him, Wataru Makimura (Hideaki Itō), seeks justice for the grief-stricken families of those victims.

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Memoirs of a Murderer contains examples of:

• Aspect Ratio Switch: While the film is mostly shot in a cinematic 16:9 ratio, it changes to 4:3 during the 1995 flashbacks.
• The Atoner: Masato defines himself as this during his confession at the beginning.
  "22 years have passed. I waited, but the police and the media failed to find me. No one understood what was behind the murders. So I have to reveal it myself. I can't be tried. My chance at legal redemption has passed. Telling the truth is my last duty."
• Bittersweet Ending: Wataru and Masato finally solve the Tokyo Strangler case, arresting Toshio in the process. The two finally receives closure over Rika's death, while Miharu apologizes for her attempt to kill Masato, after understanding the teuth. Unfortunately, that does not erase the grief that the Tokyo Strangler victims will go through for the rest of his life, while Toshio plans to write a memoir of his crimes. However, the stinger shows that Toshio does not achieve that dream.
• Booby Trap: In 1995, Makimura and Taki go to the former's apartment, in the hopes of find a new body that the Tokyo Strangler told them about. However, Taki is caught in a noose and tries to pull on it to escape, igniting a propane bottle that blowing up the place. And Taki wasn't even the intended target; rather, Makimura was.
• Bungled Suicide: Takumi threw himself off a building and onto a dumpster, but it wasn't enough to kill him. He even tried to reattempt this many times, but Wataru had him restrained. This motivated him to change his identity and try to catch the Tokyo Strangler.
• But Now I Must Go: After everything is said and done, Masato decides to leave for places unknown.
• Chekhov's Gun: Toshio's lucky pen. The man himself draws attention to it in front of cameramen, which is later grabbed by Masato to slash the "real" Tokyo Strangler in a fit of rage.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Jo, the Yakuza gang member with piercings, tries to shoot Masato at a book signing. He fails, and disappears from the movie until The Stinger, where he finally gets his revenge on the real killer.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Two of them, for Makimura and Masato.
  • Makimura's story is shown at the beginning. He was just a cop trying to catch the Tokyo Strangler, but had his mouth mutilated by him during a chase, which led to the death of his partner, Taki. His guilt towards failing to catch the killer got worse after the statute of limitations passed, preventing the Tokyo Strangler from being charged for his crimes.
  • For Masato, it isn't revealed until the end of the second act, by Makimura. When he used to be Takumi Onodera, he was planning to marry Rika after the two survived the 1995 Kobe earthquake. But this all changed when she suddenly disappeared, and, unable to live with her loss, tried to commit suicide. This failed, and after more bungled suicides, he finally changes his entire identity to catch Rika's killer.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: During Toshio's confrontation with Masato, the former reveals that he follows this trope through a "Not So Different" Remark. After he lost his best friend, his inability to reconcile what happened drove him to do anything to fill that gap, even if it was through murder.
• Driven to Suicide: Flashbacks show that Takumi chooses to kill himself after his girlfriend, Rika, goes missing for too long. However, it turns out to be a bungled suicide.
• Evil All Along: Toshio Sendo is not the hopeful reporter we all thought he was. Rather, he was the Tokyo Strangler.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: When you compare the flashbacks to the present scenes, Wataru has shorter hair in the latter, representing his guilt at not catching the Tokyo Strangler sooner.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Before Makimura and Taki go in the former's apartment to seek the next victim's body, Taki stops Makimura from going in, having smelt gas. It hints at the booby trap the Tokyo Strangler has set up: a noose that will trigger a propane bottle if pulled on.
• Forced to Watch: One of the Tokyo Strangler's modi operandi is to kill his victim in front of their loved one. This is also the reason why the murderer does what he does: he watched his friend getting suffocated by terrorists.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At the beginning, Toshio explains that he became a reporter by going over every document about the Tokyo Strangler and writing about it in 1995. This has more significance when he turns out to be the Tokyo Strangler everyone's looking for.
  • Before one of his interviews, Toshio talks about a pen his friend gave him, claiming that it's mightier than a sword. He wasn't wrong, because Masato does use it as a weapon, to angrily slash the "real" Tokyo Strangler's face.
  • Look closely at the flyaway shot of Toshio's final meeting, where all four men are seated at the "eye" table. Horizontally, each chair is a distance apart from the opposite side, meaning that the top and bottom chairs on the left and right ends of the table hint at secret allegiances. Wataru and Masato are on the left, working together to bring the Tokyo Strangler to justice. Meanwhile, Toshio and the "real" Tokyo Strangler are on the right. Toshio actually hired a man to dress up as the Tokyo Strangler for money, to detract attention from himself.
  • When Rika's murder video is shown to Toshio, Masato and Wataru, there is a building of interest seen on the left. It's the Tokyo Tower, which is clearly illuminated in the night sky. Camera cuts show that the building's lights are on at one moment, and off the next, during Rika's last throes of life. In reality, the Tokyo Tower usually turns its lights off at midnight. Since Rika's death happened the next day, this meant that the 15-year statute of limitations law can be applied to this murder. This allows the real killer to be incarcerated for good.
• Good All Along: Masato isn't the Tokyo Strangler, but rather a bereaved man who wanted answers about his girlfriend's disappearance.
• Here We Go Again!: Subverted. After Toshio is caught as the Tokyo Strangler, he muses on his murderous experiences and confesses that he would like to write a book about it. From the movie's final shot of his upcoming memoir, "Into the Abyss", it appears that he will be famous like Masato. But The Stinger puts the kibosh on that, thanks to Jo.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: As Masato is strangling Toshio for Rika's murder, Wataru pleads for Masato to stop his revenge, claiming that Rika won't be brought back. This works.
• Logo Joke: Radio transmissions about the 1995 Kobe earthquake play over the Warner Bros., Nippon Television Network Corporation and Robot Communications logos.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: An important plot point. Takumi undergoes plastic surgery to impersonate the Tokyo Strangler and catch the real one. This is how he became Masato Sonezaki.
• Manly Tears:
  • Wataru openly weeps on live television after watching a video of the Tokyo Strangler suffocating Rika.
  • In the final interviews, Masato is crying after Toshio yells at him to tell the truth about the 1995 murders.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • Not a day goes by where Wataru blames himself for losing against the Tokyo Strangler.
  • And it also runs in Wataru's family, as well. His sister, Rika, formerly worked in a Kobe hospital, and had this to say after surviving an earthquake there.
    "During the quake... I hid under a desk. If I'd come out... like nurses are trained to do... I could've saved the old patients... I don't deserve to be happy!"
• Never Trust a Trailer: Let's just say the marketing campaign was just as misleading as the movie. Every trailer attempted to convince you that the story was a cat-and-mouse game where a detective attempts to recapture a criminal who has the power of the media at his side. This only happens for the film's first half, since the rest tears that away completely with the reveal of these two men being secret allies trying to identify and catch the real murderer.
• Once More, with Clarity: Earlier in the movie, Masato whispered something inaudible to Makimura while surrounded by the press, which angered him to the point of lunging towards Masato. But when the film repeats this scene later, it turns out that Masato told Makimura to deliberately hit, so that they could pass themselves off to the media as public adversaries.
• Only in It for the Money: This is why the "real" Tokyo Strangler chose to act as a stand-in for the unseen one.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • When Wataru, Masato and the man claiming to be the real Tokyo Strangler attend Toshio's televised interview, all four of them sit at a table shaped like an eye. It symbolizes how everyone must tell their secrets, since many more people are watching it.
  • The final confrontation has Makimura warning Masato against killing Toshio, since it won't make him feel better about Rika's death. This leads to a teary-eyed Masato staring at the video of Rika's murder, with the next camera shot showing the reflections of the TV screen. They show Masato still holding the rope to strangle Toshio, but now, the reflections make it look like the rope is connected to Rika's neck. By attempting murder, Masato is on the verge of dishonoring Rika's memory.
• Save the Villain: Wataru ends up protecting Masato from assassination attempts by Jo and Miharu. Only, this becomes subverted when it turns out that Masato isn't a villain.
• Scars Are Forever: Wataru still bores the knife scar on the right of his mouth in the present day, after the Tokyo Strangler inflicted the wound when he was young.
• Seeking the Missing, Finding the Dead: Rika became missing during the time of the Tokyo Strangler murders. Coincidental, right? It wasn't, as a recording is released that depicts her murder at the hands of the Tokyo Strangler.
• Start of Darkness: At the third act, Toshio, aka the Tokyo Strangler, finally comes clean about what motivated him to kill.
  "I met a young German journalist in the Middle East. We became close. We covered stories together. At one point, armed insurgents captured us. They detained us in a pitch dark bunker for days. And my German friend... got killed before my eyes. I knew I'd be next so I gave up. I waited... but I was released. Why me?"
• The Stinger: A mid-credits scene shows Toshio being taken to his room in a mental health facility. Unfortunately for him, Jo has secretly snuck in the building, who runs towards Toshio with a knife. A stabbing sound is heard as a Smash to Black occurs, confirming the murderer's death.
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: Toshio practically begs Masato to choke him harder and avenge Rika, so that he can corrupt the latter. It takes Wataru's intervention to subvert this.
• Survivor's Guilt: A theme of the movie. Families of the Tokyo Strangler victims live on with regrets over their loved ones dying instead of them. That also applies to Rika, who feels guilty over not saving more lives in the 1995 Kobe earthquake, while Toshio watched a fellow German friend and photographer being murdered in front of him, driving him to kill as the Tokyo Strangler.
• That Man Is Dead: At the end of the movie, Masato turns around to say goodbye to Wataru. As he does, Wataru imagines that Masato is Takumi instead, hammering home how Takumi "died" in the suicide attempt, now replaced by the face of a stranger.
• The Pen Is Mightier: It is quoted by Toshio about his lucky pen, and this becomes a crucial plot point when Masato tries to attack the "real" Tokyo Strangler with that pen. After Toshio is revealed to be the Tokyo Strangler, Masato remarks that he wanted him to lash out with the pen, to make himself appear more guilty.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • Masato presents himself as such, when he declares himself as the Tokyo Strangler to the wide world. His memoir becomes popular to read, photoshoots of him take place, and he readily attends countless book signings. And while some people are not happy about his past deeds, some praise him for his honesty and willingness to atone for his crimes.
  • In the end, Toshio is revealed to be this. His job as a reporter, and his repeated claims about "shining a light in the darkness" is all bullshit. This is because he is the one and only Tokyo Strangler, who murdered six people because he wanted to find some purpose in his life after his friend's death.
• Wham Line:
  • The final interview has so many of these.
    • Toshio demands that a restrained Masato tell the truth about himself. This leads to two revelations from two different people.
      Masato: I'm not the killer. I didn't write the book.
      Toshio: Who wrote it, then?
      Wataru: I did.
    • Masato's true colors continue to be peeled back by Wataru, who drops a bombshell on his real identity.
      "And he... he was Rika's boyfriend. Takumi Onodera."
    • This segues into a series of flashbacks that show how Takumi and Masato are one and the same person. In the hospital, a severely injured Takumi tells Wataru what he wants to do next after many failed suicide attempts.
      "Makimura. I'll... change my identity. To catch the killer, I'll reinvent myself completely."
    • So, with their motivations revealed, Wataru and Masato demand that the "real" Tokyo Strangler tell them where Rika is. But this happens:
      "Real" Tokyo Strangler: I'm not the killer! I'm not him! I did this for money.
  • However, nothing can compare to the final shocking reveal of who the real killer is. Toshio finds out that someone broke into his house, going down into a private room. Masato is sitting there, and says this:
    "Come to think of it, you were the first to react to the memoir. I described the case as if it was my artwork and that irritated you. Were you angered that I took credit for your murders?"

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"I'll have a lot of time by myself now. Plenty of time to reflect. I think I'll write a memoir."