Rating: 
Summary: High and Low
Review: "High and Low," Kurosawa's 1963 crime film begins in the peaceful mansion of Gondo (Mifune), who is involved in shoe production. Kurosawa immediately introduces this character to us, showing how he has a passion for his work, and how his work is part of his life. He will not let himself be bought out by the new generation of businessmen who are in it just to make money. Gondo makes it very clear that the shoes they are making are junk and are not delicately handled like they should be. Gondo is against these businessmen and refuses to work with them.
Gondo wants to break free and work on his own branch out of the shoe company. He reveals to his family and assistant, Kawanishi, that he is ready to do so with 30 million yen, money he has been saving up for years. Things change, however, when he receives a phone call that his son has been captured. Gondo will do whatever it takes to get his son back. However, he finds out that the kidnapper has taken the wrong child; the child is actually the son of a close friend who was with Gondo and his wife at the time. Gondo is now in a dilemma.
What follows is the police investigation as we meet the chief inspector (Nakadai, a Kurosawa regular) and the other investigators. Kurosawa makes this film a deep interesting character study right from the start, as we begin to understand the kind of person Gondo is. Gondo's dilemma is vividly shown and Mifune does a great job helping us understand his plight along with Kurosawa's great script.
The second half is mainly police investigation but is so fascinating and compellling in the style by which Kurosawa strucutres it. He uses flashbacks, wipe dissolves, lighting, closeups, and music all to his advantage. Kurosawa once again proves that he as great an artist as he is a storyteller, and maybe, the finest storyteller in film. The film's detailed locations are well balanced, from Gondo's peaceful and wealthy mansion perched up on a hill, to the hot and humid investigation room, to the streets of Tokyo, and to the crack houses in the urban slums. Kurosawa makes use of all the actors effectively, particularly Mifune and Nakadai. The film is a journey through crime, tension, reality, and Kurosawa leads us every step of the way to a powerful climax.
Rating: 
Summary: Kurosawa Chase Thriller
Review: "High and Low" is one of Kurosawa's more popular films. The film concerns a criminal kidnapping the son of a wealthy shoe mogul who gets enough money to buy out his company. The kidnapping comes at the worst time -- because the kidnapper wants the exact amount of money the mogul has, and to make things worse the kidnapper kidnapped the son of the mogul's chauffeur. This happens in the first half hour, and the rest of the film is spent chasing after the criminal, leading to one of the best endings to a Kurosawa film, wherein the Mogul and Kidnapper finally meet face to face. The film is too long, with the cops hitting dead end after dead end. If it was shorter and tighter it would have been better. But, it's not a bad Friday night rental. If you like Kurosawa's line of work, you will appreciate this film.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly For Kurosawa Fans
Review: * Akira Kurosawa's 1963 thriller movie HIGH & LOW begins with
Mr. Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), more or less the vice-president
of manufacturing of Japan's biggest shoe company, engaged in
a takeover bid for the company. At the worst possible time, he
is forced to deal with a devious and ruthless kidnapper who is
determined to ruin him. Gondo calls on the law for help and
a team of detectives helps him deal with the kidnapper.HIGH & LOW, based on the Ed McBain novel KING'S RANSOM, is clearly
one of Kurosawa's lesser works. Kurosawa films tend to be
slow-moving, and of course Kurosawa fans accept this, but that is
not such a problem with an epic such as, say, KAGEMUSHA, as it is
with a thriller. HIGH & LOW is over 140 minutes long and by
modern standards it simply drags, and it is less successful at
promoting tension than it is at demanding patience. This is not to say that this is a bad movie. Even a lesser
work by Kurosawa is still far from mediocre, and HIGH & LOW
particularly shines with Toshiro Mifune's strong performance
as Mr. Gondo, an aggressive and proud man who proves to have
a conscience, in contrast to his jackal-like peers at the
shoe company. The viewer also gets a subtle, possibly not
deliberately drawn, sense of Mr. Gondo's impressive self
confidence, in that he can accept reversals because he knows
that he will prevail over the long run. The detective they
call the Bosun also puts on a good performance, though not with anywhere near the prominence of Mifune's; overall the
detectives are a nondescript lot. The production values of HIGH & LOW are mixed as well. It
is competently put together (in black and white) but only
infrequently becomes striking, for example in the Tokyo night
life scenes at the end. The general feel of an early 1960s
Japan -- where housewives still wear kimonos as a semi-regular
practice -- is interesting. Overall, I would recommend HIGH & LOW mostly to someone who
is a Kurosawa fan, as it would make a good if not spectacular
addition to a collection of Kurosawa works. I would not
recommend HIGH & LOW to a general movie viewer who wasn't
all that specifically interested in Kurosawa. Probably
YOJIMBO or THE SEVEN SAMURAI would be a better introduction.
Rating: 
Summary: A good movie.
Review: A good movie by the "great one"--Kurosawa. Not better than his other works though.
Rating:
Summary: A Complex and Suspenceful Drama
Review: A suspenseful crime story based on a novel by Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) transported to 1960's Japan. The soon to be famous "Economic miracle" is in full swing as Japan rebuilds its war-ravaged landscape. The mix of optimism and despair of the people in the thick of this economic transformation is palpable beneath the multiple story lines of scrappy cops following their hunches, the inventive kidnapper and the businessman who has paid the money he scraped together for a hostile take-over as ransom for a child not his own. Toshiro Mifune shines as the businessman while Tatuya Nakadai makes a fine appearance as Inspector Tokura. Tsutomu Yamazaki as the kidnapper debuts into a glorious career. Many of the bit players who appear only briefly eventually became big stars notably Eijiro Tono as the worker in a shoe factory and Nekohachi Edoya as the charming engineer who identifies a train, gesturing with chopsticks, by merely listening to recorded sounds. An interesting bit is done by Takeshi Kato, who played Mifune's partner in The Bad Sleep Well. Real men did not go into flower shops to buy bouquets in those days, Yet, in The Bad Sleep Well, Kato walks in and orders a bouquet "fit for a wedding night" with devilish daring while Mifune waits nervously outside the shop window looking like he wouldn't be caught dead in such a place. In High and Low, the same Kato is playing one of the four policemen in a squad car stealthily following the chief bad guy Yamazaki. When Yamazaki walks into a flower shop, the cops are ordered via radio to "Go in and buy some flowers." The shocked cops exchange glances and Kato speaks for them all into the radio, "I am sorry, no one here could buy flowers!" Very funny, especially if you knew what a sly rascal he played in a previous film.
Rating:
Summary: Another Fine Movie From Akira Kurosawa
Review: A wealthy shoe tycoon plans to take over the company, and things go wrong. Intrigued?...me neither. I watched this movie expecting a mediocre showing from my favorite director, but what I got was a wonderfully done film with a lot to say. Toshiro Mifune plays Kingo Gondo, a successful shoe tycoon with dated ideas. He believes that shoes are important because they support the entire weight of the body, while his partners just want to produce cheap stylish shoes that women will buy over and over. His partners want to vote him out of power, so Gondo comes up with a plan to buy enough of the company so he can sway the vote. Things go wrong when a man calls and says he has kiddnapped Gondo's son and he'll need to pay an amount of money, nearly equal to what he needs to keep himself in the company, he cooperates right away, but he finds out that the kiddnapper made a mistake and has kiddnapped his driver's son instead. what follows is a interesting look into the process of catching a criminal and a study on the social structure of japan (one of Kurosawa's favorite subjects). What makes this movie stand out is the fact that it is not exagerated, the process of solving the crime seems long and drawn out, yet it still manages to hold your attention. Another interesting detail is the fact that Mifune owns a shoe company, in most kidnapping movies, the target is some rich AND famous person. Gondo, while rich, is certainly not famous, he is basically a glorified shoe salesmen, which makes the story that much more realistic. Along with the kidnapping, the movie also focuses on the differences in classes. Gondo lives high on a lofty hill, while the kidnapper lives down with everybody else in the sweltering heat, hence the title high and low (or heaven and hell). I'd recommend this movie to anyone who like crime dramas or japanese cinema.
Rating:
Summary: Another Fine Movie From Akira Kurosawa
Review: A wealthy shoe tycoon plans to take over the company, and things go wrong. Intrigued?...me neither. I watched this movie expecting a mediocre showing from my favorite director, but what I got was a wonderfully done film with a lot to say. Toshiro Mifune plays Kingo Gondo, a successful shoe tycoon with dated ideas. He believes that shoes are important because they support the entire weight of the body, while his partners just want to produce cheap stylish shoes that women will buy over and over. His partners want to vote him out of power, so Gondo comes up with a plan to buy enough of the company so he can sway the vote. Things go wrong when a man calls and says he has kiddnapped Gondo's son and he'll need to pay an amount of money, nearly equal to what he needs to keep himself in the company, he cooperates right away, but he finds out that the kiddnapper made a mistake and has kiddnapped his driver's son instead. what follows is a interesting look into the process of catching a criminal and a study on the social structure of japan (one of Kurosawa's favorite subjects). What makes this movie stand out is the fact that it is not exagerated, the process of solving the crime seems long and drawn out, yet it still manages to hold your attention. Another interesting detail is the fact that Mifune owns a shoe company, in most kidnapping movies, the target is some rich AND famous person. Gondo, while rich, is certainly not famous, he is basically a glorified shoe salesmen, which makes the story that much more realistic. Along with the kidnapping, the movie also focuses on the differences in classes. Gondo lives high on a lofty hill, while the kidnapper lives down with everybody else in the sweltering heat, hence the title high and low (or heaven and hell). I'd recommend this movie to anyone who like crime dramas or japanese cinema.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, complex, and riveting
Review: Akira Kurosawa is better known here for his historic dramas, but he was a master of many forms. Here he combines again with Toshiro Mifune to create an atmospheric mystery ostensibly about a kidnapping, but also a social commentary on the wide gap being developed in Japanese society by post-war prosperity. The Japanese title actually better translates Heaven and Hell, and refers to the two worlds of the antagonists: the elevated world of the business executive, and the degraded world of the poor and desperate. Kurosawa moves us emotionally and physically from one world to the other, concluding with a deathrow confrontation between the principles that is one of the most harrowing in film. This films ranks high on my list of Kurosawa films, and is a classic by any standard.
Rating:
Summary: GRAND-DADDY OF THE COP MOVIE GENRE
Review: And I thought Kurosawa was big on Samurai movies. This is a stunning cop thriller grounded in real-life Japan of the 60s. Toshiro Mifune is an honest and hugely successful businessman who loves his job as a shoe factory exec and is in a battle for corporate control against a pack of hyenas. He has mortgaged and borrowed and scraped to raise the money for a surprise coup to takeover the firm. Until his son is kidnapped. But then there is a major plot twist: it is not his own son who was taken but his son's friend, the chauffeur's kid, and the ransom demanded is atrocious. If he forks the dough, he stands to lose everything he has worked so hard for, but can he simply sacrifice the chauffeur's child because it is not his? From here on High and Low (perhaps better translated as Heaven and Hell) is a riveting "police procedural." Watching Kurosawa's maestro camerawork is a rare, almost unique experience, he is a man in complete control of his visuals and his subject matter. The DVD is letterboxed and the print B&W. This not only lends beautifully to a cinematically compelling human drama, but it also draws you into the theme emotionally. A superb film, captivating from start to finish. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: So Gripping You Just Might Crush Your Remote Control
Review: Another great masterpiece from Akira Kurosawa. High and Low tells the tale of a rich Japanese businessman who is blackmailed right when he is about to make a hostile takeover of his partners. Toshiro Mifune is incredible as the lead character, never giving his audience the slightest clue as to what he might do - will he spend the ransom money which would rescue his son but also make him penniless? You will truly be second guessing Mifune throughout the movie. Kurosawa intelligently limits his creative camera angles and pacing, giving the story a modern, realistic feel. The film never quite shakes loose of its stage roots, but this is acceptable given the material. A lesser known work that is required material for any Kurosawa fan. IMPORTANT NOTE: This DVD did NOT work on my computer's DVD player. I can only watch it on my Playstation 2.
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