HIGH AND LOW

As the trajectory of Ozu and Mizoguchi continues to rise so that of Kurosawa continues to fall. Critics have always preferred the esoteric and Kurosawa has always been seen as the most Westernized, the most commercial of Japanese directors. He was, of course, best known for his historical epics and samurai films but he also made many contemporary movies including a number of first-rate thrillers of which "High and Low" may be the best.

It takes Ed McBain's novel "King's Ransom" and deposits in a post-war Japan that could just as easily be New York or Chicago or LA but for the fact that this is a country of two halves, a society divided into 'high' and 'low', of those who have made it in the years after the nation's defeat and those who haven't. It's about a kidnapping that has gone askew; the wrong boy has been kidnapped, not the son of the rich industrialist but the chauffeur's son. Does the industrialist pay the ransom and ruin himself, (he has put his entire fortune into a take-over bid), or does he risk the boy's life? The film itself is divided into two halves, both equally exciting; the first dealing with the kidnapping and the second with the hunt for the kidnappers while the plot is further complicated by the industrialist, Gondo's (an excellent Toshiro Mifune), involvement in the take-over.

This is a terrific police procedural picture as detailed as something David Fincher might make today, superbly shot in black and white Cinemascope and it displays the same kind of raw urgency one might associate with Samuel Fuller. In other words, there is nothing artsy, esoteric or precious about this film yet it displays all the skills of a great director working at the top of his game. Perhaps it is time to return Kurosawa to his rightful place at the top of the critical canon.