The Castle of Sand (1974)

The Castle of Sand (Suna no utsuwa)
Directed by Yoshitaro Nomura
Written by Shinobu Hashimoto, Yoshitaro Nomura and Yoji Yamada from a novel by Seicho Matsumoto
1974/Japan
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy. — Ambrose Bierce

Yoshitaro Nomura delivers a solid, intricate police procedural

An old man is found murderd in Tokyo train station.  As the story starts, the police don’t even know the identity of the victim.  He was a retired policeman and nobody has a bad word to say about him.  He was very generous to an orphan he adopted. As the investigation spreads out to various locations in Japan the police find things are seldom what they seem.  I really don’t want to reveal any of the movies secrets.

I really enjoyed this.  The story has lots of surprises and kept me engrossed the whole time.