Shiro's Story Part 3 (2018) User Reviews

Closure, but stays mediocre

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 10 March 2020]

"Shiro's Story Part 3" is an American live action short film / music video from 2018 and as you can see from the title it is the second sequel to "Shiro's Story" and the writer and director here is again Rapman. This already tells you that it is a lot about the music and also what kind of music, which may have to do with my relatively low rating that it is not my favorite genre, so certainly a bit on the subjective side. Anyway, this one here runs for slightly under 22 minutes, which makes it by far the biggest, i.e. longest, of the three installments. Actually, it is almost as long as parts 1 and 2 taken together, so the entire thing runs for 46 minutes or so, which means you can quickly watch it all in one sitting, which probably makes sense. Still, perhaps because of the duration, it is the one with the most views on Youtube (almost 8 millions now and since it was released just 1.5 years ago, it's a massive number), not a big lead, but still, so many probably watched it without having seen the first two. Or they just closed it in-between and continued watching later on. That is an option as well obviously. I personally watched the first a long time ago and now decided to check out the third. I generally think you should never be obliged to watch films in an order in the sense that it is essential to have seen 1 and 2 to enjoy and understand 3. It can be advantage, that is alright, but should not be a requirement. Okay, what else can I say here. This one reminded me of R.Kelly's similar approach where he tells a story through music and also voices the characters with his lyrics. This was done in a similar fashion here. I wouldn't say they copied it or so, it's alright. But there were moments when it felt a bit strange, like when we have a character speak in full rage and it was bizarre to hear the rapping of what he has to say, also because ot came from somebody else I suppose. This film is definitely going for a lot in this relatively short running time. Maybe for too much. I must say it all felt a bit generic with the arguments, the parts where people point guns at one another and also at the very end the tragedy. The latter did not evoke any real emotion in me to be honest and I think with this "rap voicing" approach (let's call it that), it is really even more difficult to make the film work on an emotional level, but they (or he, in the sense of Rapman) did not really succeed here all in all. It is definitely not a failure, but for me the forgettable is way more frequent than the good quality, so I give the overall outcome here a thumbs-down. It also seems with the time passed since this one was released that it was the final chapter, also because the two gaps between the parts were not that big timewise. Interesting to see them go for an unhappy ending, this is definitely not a key criticism for me here. There are others though. Watch something else instead.