High and Low

High and Low is Akira Kurosawa's beautiful social commentary on Japanese business and culture. This film is a film of two halves really. Post-WWII Japan was a very hard time. A whole country if grief and sorrow after the war. With Films like Godzilla coming out, everyone needed a way to express their inward feelings.




Toshirô Mifune, a Kurosawa regular, plays a longtime shoemaker, Kingo Gondo (almost sounds like a Muppet). The movie opens with other executives of the powerful company paying Mifune a most unpleasant visit. They give a proposition. The other shareholders want to overthrow the 'Old Man', the company president and start making crap shoes so people will have to buy more often. Mifune is absolutely outraged at this and throws them out.






Very soon he gets a call from a mysterious stranger (or is it?) saying he has kidnapped his son, but to their surprise Toshiro's son is still there...but his friend isn't! Soon we get the cops involved and we go to work trying to save the little boy. But the kidnapper's ransom is just about all poor Mr. Gondo has left because he sold most of his money to buy out the shoe company!






So eventually in the second half Toshiro takes a backseat while we follow the detectives and try to find the evil monster who did this dirty deed. The film takes a very weird turn there. As brilliant as this film is, I don't really like the twist. Well no, I do like it, but it just goes somewhere completely unexpected. So as a 'whodunit' some people might not like it, but i just think it feels a little weird. That being said, High and Low is Kurosawa at his best and something that should not be missed.