When his driver’s little boy is kidnapped, wealthy businessman Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) has to decide if he’s willing to put his entire career and fortune at stake to save him; the kidnapper actually intended to take his son.

A thriller set in a cityscape, first told from the perspective of the businessman, then from that of the police detectives hunting the kidnapper and his allies. Very straightforward and unsentimental, with added social issues, an interesting moral dilemma and a high degree of tension in spite of its running length and deliberate pacing. Far from a complex story, but dark.

Very nice use of widescreen photography.

1963-Japan. 142 min. B/W. Widescreen. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijiro Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima. Novel: Ed McBain (“King’s Ransom”). Cinematography: Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saito. Cast: Toshiro Mifune (Kingo Gondo), Tatsuya Mihashi (Kawanishi), Yutaka Sada (Aoki), Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyoko Kagawa, Kenjiro Ishiyama. 

Trivia: Original title: Tengoku to jigoku. The story was previously filmed for American TV as an episode of 87th Precinct (1961-1962). Remade in India in 1977 and in the U.S. as Highest 2 Lowest (2025).  

Last word: “I always think even the worst criminal should have his say. I tried to avoid these sympathetic feelings, but this much slipped from my hand. Originally I tried various types of music while Yamazaki, the kidnapper, was walking toward his house. Well, some other music I chose to be heard over the radio in that scene evoked much more sympathy so that the audience would really feel, ‘Oh, what a helpless fellow.’ I finally settled on ‘The Trout’ of Schubert. It was not my real intention to make the criminal sympathetic, but as a director it came naturally to me to be sympathetic toward an oppressed person.” (Kurosawa, interview with Joan Mellen)