High and Low [1963]
Based on an Ed McBain novel, High and Low is a gripping police thriller starring Toshiro Mifune. Wealthy industrialist Kingo Gondo (Mifune) faces an agonising choice when a ruthless kidnapper, aiming to snatch his young son, takes the chauffeur’s boy by mistake but still demands the ransom leaving Gondo facing ruin if he pays up.
An anatomy of the inequalities in modern Japanese society, High and Low is a complex film noir, where the intense police hunt for the kidnapper is accompanied by penetrating insight into the kidnapper’s state of mind. Kurosawa’s virtuoso direction provides no easy answers, and in short, intense sequences he portrays the businessman, the police and the criminal as equally brutal, but nonetheless human.
Japan | 1963 | black & white | Japanese language with English subtitles | 143 minutes | Academy ratio 2.35:1 (16×9 anamorphic) | Region 2 DVD
