High and Low

It is possibly Kurosawa's most underrated masterpiece, rich in characterization and structure, yet lost in the shuffle among such classics as "Rashomon" and "Seven Samurai." [14 Sep 2008, p.N31]

A sizzling, artistic crackerjack and a model of its genre, pegged on a harassed man's moral decision, laced with firm characterizations and tingling detail and finally attaining an incredibly colorful crescendo of microscopic police sleuthing.

I would nominate this authoritative 1962 adaptation of Ed McBain’s novel The King’s Ransom as Akira Kurosawa’s best nonperiod picture, though Ikiru and Rhapsody in August are tough competitors.

Intricate blocking keeps these early scenes visually engaging, but there’s no doubt High and Low takes off once the exec agrees to pay and we’re treated to an elaborate money-drop sequence, with the kidnapper staying one step ahead of the police.

The first half, set in a single room, echoes Hitchcock's Rope in exploring his moral dilemma while the action takes place off-screen. The second is disconcertingly different in that it focuses excitingly on the police procedures deployed in the hunt for the kidnapper. But the connections, though sometimes overly obvious in appealing to the liberal conscience, span fascinating Dostoevskian depths.

It's not one of his masterpieces, but High and Low fully illustrates why Kurosawa is regarded as Japan's foremost director.

High and Low is more than a crime melodrama; it's a philosophical drama as well. [23 Nov 1988, p.D06]

I was turned onto this movie from the Spike Lee remake called Highest 2 Lowest. It was popular on social media, so I decided to look into the original movie, and I was very pleasantly surprised by how good this movie is. The pacing, mystery, and class commentary in this movie are incredible, and still incredibly stimulating, even in 2025.

I’m always amazed at how a single film can be fundamentally characterized in multiple ways, but that’s understandable when the picture combines an array of diverse elements, each of which has a validity all its own that can subsequently lead to different overarching interpretations. Such is the case with this 1963 film classic from famed Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa, which provides the cinematic inspiration behind filmmaker Spike Lee’s current reimagination, “Highest 2 Lowest,” now playing theatrically. Like the current iteration, “High and Low” follows the story of a wealthy businessman, Kingo Gondô (Toshirô Mifune), who’s looking to take control of the shoe manufacturing company for which he works, a plan that requires him to leverage his entire personal fortune to make it possible. But, just as he’s about to close the deal, he’s distracted by the alleged kidnapping of his young son (Toshio Egi), a crime for which the perpetrator demands a ransom equal in value to the funds needed to cover the pending transaction. However, not long after hearing about the kidnapping, Gondô learns that the culprit has nabbed the wrong child, erroneously taking the son (Masahiko Shimazu) of his chauffeur (Yutaka Sada). But Gondô is not off the hook: the kidnapper still demands payment of the ransom, even though the crime doesn’t involve his son. This leaves Gondô with a huge moral dilemma: does he use the money to close his business deal or to pay the ransom of his employee’s child? As Gondô grapples with this decision, an intense police investigation ensues to discover the kidnapper’s identity and to figure out a way to retrieve both the victim and the ransom money. Unlike the current film, though, Kurosawa’s version focuses less on the particulars driving this scenario and more intently on the ethical questions that the protagonist is left to wrestle with, issues ultimately symbolic of the divisive class and economic disparities in Japanese society. Indeed, while the picture provides viewers with its share of intense thriller moments, in many regards it’s really more of a morality play, not only where Gondô is concerned, but also in its exploration of the inherent chasms between rich and poor, privileged and impoverished, and control and servitude. (This attribute, in turn, helps to shed light on the nature of the film’s character and the relevance of its original Japanese title, “Tengoku to jigoku,” which translates to “Heaven and Hell,” in my opinion a more fitting appellation that probably should have been retained when renamed in English.) The foregoing aspects of the picture thus distinguish this predecessor work from the current release, even though the exact nature of the nexus between kidnapper and target is not developed as fully here as I believe it should have been (one of the few ways in which the present offering modestly improves upon the original). In addition, there are times in the opening act, as well as in the run-up to the film’s conclusion, when the storytelling could have been a little brisker (the slower pacing style of the period in which the picture was made notwithstanding). Still, this offering’s social and cultural themes are nevertheless intriguing, and their place here has a tendency to grow on audiences as the picture progresses. And those thematic aspects, when combined with the contrast of the narrative’s riveting criminal investigation, make for an intriguing mix, one that undoubtedly accounts for the differing perspectives that this release often evokes among viewers. While “High and Low” may not be Kurosawa’s best work when compared with such pictures as “Rashômon” (1950) and “Ikiru” (1952), it stands out as one of the filmmaker’s most thoughtful and engaging works, one that probes the heaven and hell that reside here on Earth, both individually and at their points of intersection, and how the lines between them can become all too easily blurred, a caution to us all.

The cinematography, both in the we quasi-locked-room first act and the subsequent chases, makes this an impressive artifact of its time, but between the childishly constructed police-procedural and the half-baked morality play, ‘High and Low’ should be neither entertaining nor insightful to a modern viewer.