Gresh854 WOW! This is my first time watching a Akira Kurosawa film and I've instantaneously converted into being a massive fan of his after witnessing this! High and Low plays out almost as if it was two different movies; the first half being an intense, claustrophobic thriller and the second half being a detailed crime investigation. The mystery and eminently realistic atmosphere surrounding the film's story-which is greatly achieved thanks to its extraordinarily written screenplay-is gruesomely gripping. High and Low is the original Chinatown/Se7en/Fargo/Blue Velvet/Prisoners. Imagine those movies all combined into a single package and you can essentially picture how brilliantly eccentric I found this film to be. (Verdict: A+)

Yashua Kimbrough (jimniexperience) Two-part story, one narrative following Mr. Gondo's kidnapping narrative, and the other following the police investigation to track down the perpetrators. A honest businessman is the center of a scandal as his housekeeper's child is kidnapped and held for ransom. To make matters worse , he's infighting with his company directors who are trying to steal his shares and get him fired. He decides against paying the ransom and hires detectives to track down the kidnappers, but through guilt decides to give in to the captors demands. The Detectives, seeing the honest side of the mega-businessman, decide to do evverything in their power to bring the culprit to justice. They trace his calls, study daylight cycles of phone booths, investigate seashore with son, and track down all trolleys and serum merchants. The investigation leads the cops down a path of murder, heroin, extortion, and stake-outs in this intense original thriller .Highly intelligent movie

George Roots (GeorgeRoots) "This film brought awareness and somewhat changed laws when it came to child kidnapping in Japan, and is easily one of Kurosawa's finest outside of his period dramas". If I could end this review with just that statement I would be very happy, for those who have seen the movie know exactly what I'm talking about.Based on the 1959 Novel "King's Ransom" by author Ed McBain (How amazing and American is that for a name), the first half all takes place in a living room. Shoe executive Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), who was about to craftily claim a decent position within his line of business, must soon carefully consider his next possible choices to not give in to anonymous demands from a phone caller who has abducted a child as a means of leverage. The next half is a police procedural's nightmare lead by another fantastic actor and Kurosawa regular Tatsuya Nakadai, to find this elusive caller in hopes of discovering how and why these events started in the first place.The two things that will sell you immediately is Toshiro Mifune's incredible performance, the other is the pacing and dialogue which is crafted so well never has the nature of a situation been so apparent. The directions in which the narrative takes never falter as they progress, and the camera-work by Kurosawa is easily one of the sharpest of his Black and White movie era. Whilst this all leads to an "anti-climactic" situation of sorts, the simplicity of the surprises and revelations lead to one of those movies that leaves a deep impression of just how meaningless and out of hand such a situation becomes (The Western title "High and Low" refers to Gondo's house upon the hill overlooking the slums of a city, the movies exact title "Tengoku to Jigoku", literally means "Heaven and Hell").Final Verdict: Impeccably crafted, almost endlessly re-watchable and influenced countless crime drama we see on Television today. It certainly stood for something for its time, and presents a scenario where unfortunately none of our characters can seem to find any middle ground. 10/10.

sandnair87 One of the all-time-great "procedurals," High and Low is a combination of immensely powerful psychodrama and exquisitely detailed police procedural - a movie that illuminates its world with a wholeness and complexity you rarely see in film. The images populate the widescreen frame like a pressure cooker that is ready to blow up. And in High and Low, blow up they do!The opening action is entirely set in Gondo's claustrophobic luxurious house, high up in the hill above the city, overlooking its industrial slums. High and Low tells the story of powerhouse shoe executive Kingo Gondo (Toshirô Mifune) battling the greedy board of directors to see what direction the company is going, as he resists their scheme to make a shoddy shoe to buildup profits. On the eve of pulling off the big coup of taking over the company-a proposition that throws him in hock down to his own furniture, he's hit by a huge ransom demand, with a twist -- the kidnapper mistakenly takes, not his own son, but his chauffeur's. Paying the ransom will ruin him financially; not paying it will ruin him as a human being. As Gondo struggles with his dilemma, the movie acquires an almost allegorical profundity, while Gondo is forced to decide between the life of an innocent and fealty to an abstract code. The second half of the film changes moods considerably, as it moves outdoors into the bustling and tawdry metropolitan area and becomes a police procedural film; it becomes nail-biting as it follows through on the money exchange and the manhunt for the kidnappers. As Gondo, Mifune sheds his samurai garb to play the modern-day millionaire in a suit and tie and conveys all the terrible rage of his ambition as well as the indestructible germ of compassion that lives inside him with remarkable effortlessness. But the real hero of the movie is Akira Kurosawa, who weaves together character study, social commentary and police procedure and combines what might have been a whole series of movies for another, lesser director. Nothing compares to the experience of watching a movie where every scene, every sequence, every shot are alive with confidence in the medium. Your complaints with Kurosawa (if any) would dissolve in the backwash of pure film pleasure High and Low offers, as you're introduced once again to the master.