If you’re the kind of person who enjoys binging on true crime podcasts and Errol Morris documentaries, you’d do well to investigate Kazuya Murayama’s “Torao.” This noirish drama delves into an unsolved, decades-old murder case, but takes the bold step of casting its real-life inspiration in the title role.
Such gambits can go horribly awry, as anyone who watched Clint Eastwood’s “The 15:17 to Paris” can testify, but the eponymous Torao Nishimura has undeniable screen presence. With his compact physique, rugged features and white hair slicked back in a ponytail, he’s like a crime fiction archetype made flesh — the retired detective, still haunted by the one case he couldn’t crack.
In 1992, a 20-year-old female swimming coach was murdered after leaving work in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. Torao and his fellow investigators were able to determine the place of death from leaves in the victim’s hair, but were confounded by the fact that her killer had then driven her body back to the pool’s parking lot, in her own car.