High & Low (1963)

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Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in High and Low, the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. Adapting Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on class and contemporary Japanese society.

Kurosawa drew on the thriller "King's ransom" for this study of the inequalities and hierarchical rigidity of modern Japan. In the first half of the film, set in a single room, an industrialist agonises on wheter to pay the huge ransom demanded by kidnappers who have mistakenly snatched his chauffeur's son instead of his own. The second half of the film, shot in a frenzied restless style on sleazy urban locations, concentrates on the police hunt for the kidnapper.