High and Low

This is one of the outstanding detective films. For me, the most remarkable feature of this film is its architecture - the beginning is a long, static set piece taking place in one room. however, about a third of the way through the movie, it erupts into action, showing the resourcefulness of a largely blue collar police force tracking a lone sociopathic criminal.

The film is a fascinating portrait of '60's Japan, but at the same time reveals its roots in Ed McBain's _King's Ransom_, from which it was taken.

This is one of those films which doesn't seem to age after several viewings. Especially affecting are the police detectives, whose proletarian roots contrast sharply with the cold insensitivity of the powerful corporate executives. But the police find a hero in Gondo, the rebellious general manager who stakes his entire fortune to rescue his chauffeur's son. The admiration that the police detectives feel for him is one of the key emotions in the film.

"High and Low" is one of those deceptive detective-thrillers that sneak in under your radar and grab you from behind with their storytelling magic. It's proof positive of Kurosawa's mastery of film and all its imagery.

The story was adapted from an Ed McBain "87th Precinct" novel, "King's Ransom", and is really very simple. A successful businessman (Mr. Gondo) in the middle of a major deal is told his son has been kidnapped. All concerns about money fly out the window...until Gondo learns it was actually his chauffeur's son who was taken by mistake. Doesn't matter; the kidnapper still wants him to pay the ransom, even though it will bankrupt him. Will Gondo destroy his standing in the business world to save the life of a child that is not even his? Or will he just leave it to the police and fate to determine whether the child lives or dies? This makes up the first half of the film.

The second half deals with the search for the kidnapper and his accomplices, and it does not shy away from showing how dull and grueling good police work is. Step by step, the cops narrow their field of suspects and build their evidence to link their prey to murder as well as the kidnapping, meaning he would face execution. This makes up the second half of the film.

It helps to know that in the original story, the businessman refuses to pay the ransom but does help the police track down the kidnappers. It also helps to understand that in Japan, working your way up from making shoes and satchels by hand to being in a position where you could wind up owning the company is a HUGE accomplishment in a caste driven society. It means he is due additional respect, and this is what Gondo faces losing if he pays the ransom, which is far more important than the fact that he will be driven into bankruptcy.

From the first scene through an amazingly exciting section on a bullet train to the ending moments between Gondo and the kidnapper, Kurosawa shows exactly why he is a master of cinema. To take what is basically an episode of "Law and Order" and make it into a meditation on the meaning of life and evil is not something just any film school twit could do.

To me, the best moment on a human level comes when Gondo descends the stairs the morning after the kidnapping to explain to the police why he cannot pay the ransom for a child not even his. You can see the man realizing he is allowing himself go to hell in order to protect his family and station in life, and Toshiro Mifune underplays it beautifully...and Kurosawa lets it just simply happen. Wonderful.

THIS is the movie Mel Gibson's "Ransom" wishes it had been. something real and human and meaningful instead of merely kick-ass.

Ten out of ten stars.

While I've seen HIGH AND LOW referred to as a "film noir," a "detective drama," a "riveting game of cat-and-mouse," and so on into infinity, I think those terms tend to underestimate some very great films (such as this and Kubrick's THE KILLING) and attempts to place them within boundaries over which the expanse of a few powerful films such as these spill.

Indeed HIGH AND LOW is a story involving some familiar techniques from film noir; the detective story; and the hunter-and-hunted storyline, but it surpasses so many films that might be included in a list of fine films noires. It, in true Kurosawa style (one which Stanley Kubrick matched blow-for-blow, seeming to complement one another in their stunning gifts to the cinema), stands as a fable showing the differences and tensions which the coexistance of different classes creates.

Gondo, the rich on high, receives torment from those who live below him, being literally perched upon a hill, overlooking the city in a feudalistic way, in which the king's palace gazes down upon the serfs below. As the kidnapper says, "it's hot as hell down here. But you wouldn't know that, you have air conditioning." Thus we see the parallels pile upon each other: it is about class warfare but also shows the differences between heaven and hell; and Gondo makes both a descent and ascent simultaneously.

The plot is simple, but the truth is complicated, and I won't go into it here, but take my word as it stands: this is an amazing piece of film. See it now or regret it! Every Kurosawa film is sublime.

High and Low, like Yojimbo and Throne of Blood, combines elements to create something special while seeming rather routine- while Yojimbo seems like a bad-ass samurai flick, it has the ingredients of a western and satire, and Throne of Blood is a rather faithful, strange adaptation of Macbeth in the guise of a warlord/samurai tale, High and Low does a similar method. Akira Kurosawa, a filmmaker who gets film buff's ears lit up at the mere mention of him, can usually be counted on to keep a film interesting even if it may not be entertaining to some of the crowd that likes a section of his movies or another (there's usually a split between his samurai/medieval tales and epics, and his dramas about the tragedies of ordinary people).

Here he finds a middle ground- the story is taken from a hard-boiled detective novel, the kind you could probably buy for a quarter or fifty cents in the old days- as he tells of two stories interconnected at the hip, both with detail a commercial Hollywood director would brush off. The first is of businessman Gondo (Toshiro Mifune, with his usual bravura presence, but with enough nuanced and quiet moments for two movies), who is about to close a deal to get the shoe company he's worked for for years, when he gets a phone call. There's been a kidnapping- not his son, but his chauffeur's by default. Backed into a corner without options, he gets together 30 million he really can't afford, and gives it to the kidnapper(s). The police, meanwhile, are not about to give up, and start digging for clues with an in-depth investigation that goes to probe every possibility: the chauffeur's son used as a partial witness with drawings; a car; a trolly car; all this leads to nothing and everything, leading to a third act that's as riveting as the first two.

Although the acting by everyone involved, cop characters included (Tatsuya Nakadai and Yutaka Sada are surprisingly good, the later even with limited screen time), Kurosawa keeps the film deliberately paced. Another director (more modern perhaps, but maybe not) might cut to the chase quicker, cutting past most of the investigation details, and even the emotional high-points in the first act. But Kurosawa is as interested in the nature and details of what the police do as he is with the compositions, which are constructed and framed as only an artist would do. The film creates a superb juxtaposition as well- Mifune's Gondo is enraged about what will happen with his money, but his morals stand above everything in his business affairs. Meanwhile, the cops here aren't cruel and unforgiving, but professionals trying to crack a case that the audience can hang onto. And then when the "seedy" underbelly of the city comes into view, it's looked on with at least some compassion by Kurosawa, and it's not too over-the-top.

If all your looking for is thrill after thrill, like in Sanjuro or even Hidden Fortress, look elsewhere- the violence, by the way, is kept to a low level for this one (it'd even be quite suitable for kids, if they don't mind the subtitles and quintessential intensity in the Japanese style of film acting). But for tight, often gripping suspense in the IL' 'whodunit' mystery tale, this is a keeper. Manipulative, perhaps, yet in the hands of a master it's an exemplary deal. And, in the end, it even provides a sad, existential kind of conclusion as good and evil become blurred as the kidnapper looks through glass at the disillusioned Gondo. It's one of the great endings in world cinema. A+

Toshiro Mifune is a businessman in a Japan that is on the brink of the Economic Miracle of the Sixties. He is an honest man who loves his job as a shoe factory exec and is in a battle for corporate control against a pack of hyenas. He has mortgaged and borrowed and scraped to raise the money for a surprise coup when his son is kidnapped. But there is a major plot twist: it is not HIS son that was taken but his son's playmate, the chauffeur's kid and the ransom demanded is astronomical. If he pays he will lose everything he has worked so hard for, but can he just sacrifice the chauffeur's child because it is not his? From here on High and Low (perhaps better translated as Heaven and Hell) is a police procedural based on an Ed McBain 87th precinct story.

Watching this film I had a rare, almost unique, experience. I saw it on a fairly screen tv, letterboxed, in a darkened room. All the preceding conditions helped contribute to put me into an objective/subjective middle ground where I had the feeling of looking through a special visor that allowed me to see the world by means of an almost perfect film as if through the eyes of a cinematic genius who is in total command of his artistic means and in total command of his subject matter. I think the key to this experience is that while High and Low is interesting as human drama, it is yet peculiarly uninvolving emotionally but very involving cinematically. These distances are important in Kurosawa's films (he is high on my list of top ten directors but after Welles). In IKIRU you probably could not be more deeply involved emotionally, while in RAN there is nothing but relentless distance.

I think a good companion film to watch with this would be Kurosawa's earlier, looser, but much more individually tense, police film STRAY DOG (this time Mifune is the cop)