‘The Brightest Sun’ review: Hidetoshi Nishijima plays detective for director Tetsuya Nakashima

Dir: Tetsuya Nakashima. Japan. 2025. 129mins

A broken-down private investigator and his novice assistant are tasked with finding a colleague’s murderer, forcing them both to reckon with the legacy of their own parenting in The Brightest Sun, director Tetsuya Nakashima’s first feature in seven years. Adapted from Uchiumi Bunzo’s popular novel about a missing boy with spina bifida, the film is anchored by a stoic performance from Drive My Car star Hidetoshi Nishijima as a detective grieving the collapse of his family and his role as a father. In jettisoning the heightened sentiment of his early work, The Brightest Sun becomes Nakashima’s most emotionally grounded film to date, a compassionate and sensitively rendered drama that rewards patience (despite meandering somewhat in the third act).

A potent examination of parenthood and its power to transform us, for better and for worse.

The combination of Nakashima and Nishijima’s names should ensure The Brightest Sun a long life on the festival circuit following its world premiere opening the Hong Kong International Film Festival as well as interest from niche distributors at home in Japan and across Asia-Pacific. Beyond the region a run in art house cinemas isn’t out of the question in addition to a place with streamers.

Nakashima broke out in 2004 with the decidedly candy-coloured Kamikaze Girls (the same time Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Girls were trending) and the frothy musical Memories Of Matsuko in 2006. It was his turn towards the gritty that really built him a following as the ’anti-Kore-eda’, specifically for the thorny Confessions (2010) and the much more violent The World Of Kanako (2014), both centred around parents exacting grisly revenge for the untimely deaths of children. His latest continues this darker and more confronting theme, and is a more nuanced and potent examination of parenthood and its power to transform us, for better and for worse.

The Brightest Sun most closely recalls Confessions in tone and aesthetic, particularly given the murder mystery framework Nakashima and co-writer Nobuhiro Monma (who also worked on The World Of Kanako) deploy. The action begins in June 1994, at the funeral of unethical, un-mourned PI Yonemoto (Jiro Sato), the victim of a brutal stabbing. Attending are fellow PI Mitsuo Satake (Nishijima), a drunk with no time for people and little interest in engaging with anyone. After the funeral his boss Teranishi (veteran Koji Yakusho) asks him to look into the homicide as a courtesy, and bring the agency’s trainee, single divorced mother Satoko Nakano (Hikaru Mitsushima), along with him.

The Brightest Sun plays like a mystery initially, complete with detective thriller conventions from mismatched partners to red herrings. The prime suspect in the murder is Yonemoto’s last client, which under normal detective thriller circumstances would be the femme fatale. Instead it’s an unassuming housewife, Tomie Hirotsu (Haru Kuroki), who is trying to find the son she gave up nine years before who has spina bifida. Yonemoto’s findings prompt Satake and his assistant to reflect on their relationships with their own children and the film also explores what it means to be a parent and the sometimes moral conundrums that come with it – including the issues related to children with special needs, still an awkward topic in Japanese society.

The cast really carries the day, with Nishijima setting the tone as a man equally worn-down and frustrated by his inability to reconcile his own parenting trauma and make time for his teenaged daughter (Nanami Yamazaki), who’d clearly like him to try. He taps a similar wounded vein he did for Ryusuke Hamaguchi, just with more self-destructive tendencies that mask Satake’s simmering sorrow. His cultivated distance is balanced nicely by Mitsushima’s Satoko, who has her own sorrows thanks to a single careless moment she can’t take back, which is mirrored by the regret and guilt Tomie feels for different reasons. 

After a choppy start that relies heavily on non-linear editing and wilful obfuscation, the film settles down into a graceful rhythm set by cinematographer Shigeki Akiyama’s steely blue-grey wash that signals events in the past contrasted with the warmer tones of the present. The visuals are consistent throughout the film, effectively levelling the playing field in a story without clear villains and heroes. It’s a tricky balance to maintain, but Nakashima and Monma manage to provoke thought without being judgmental towards their characters, no matter how tempting it is to apply easy labels, particularly when it comes to our children.