make very different films<\/u><\/a> from Kurosawa.<\/p>\n However, even if you watch the more popular Kurosawa movies, like Rashomon<\/em>, Kagemusha<\/em>, and Seven Samurai<\/em>, you might not be aware that Kurosawa actually delved into the crime drama quite a bit, with High and Low<\/em> being his film noir masterpiece.<\/p>\nIn a lot of ways, High and Low<\/em> is a police procedural, as Tatsuya Nakadai plays the chief investigator in the kidnapping. His plan is to find the identity of the kidnapper, and he involves Mifune’s character to locate him.<\/p>\nThis is an interesting turn since Mifune’s character starts out as the reluctant protagonist who is just trying to overtake the shoe company that he works for, only to get embroiled in a crime. So, if you’ve only seen Kurosawa’s Jidaigeki films, I encourage you to check out this film noir classic. I assure you, you’ll be impressed.<\/p>\n\n\nCredit: Toho<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Almost All Of The Characters Are Morally Grey<\/h2>\n I love unlikeable characters, especially when they’re our protagonist, and at the start of this film, there’s probably no more unlikeable character than our \u201chero,\u201d Kingo Gondo, played by Mifune.<\/p>\n
From the very start, he wants to use his own income in a leveraged buyout to get more control of his company. And, when the kidnapping occurs, he feels more vexed about it than worried, especially once he learns it’s not his child. He decides that he won’t meet the demands.<\/p>\n
Plus, when the hostage is<\/em> eventually returned, Kingo uses it against his company, as if the kid were just a pawn. He goes straight to the paper and makes it so that he comes out a hero, making his company look bad, as they were trying to vilify him over the kidnapping.<\/p>\nI mean, he is not<\/em> a nice guy. And, Inspector Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai) doesn’t exactly have his heart in the right place, either. In a bid to get the kidnapper’s identity, the police put a false story in the newspaper to get him to come out of hiding, and he winds up killing somebody with uncut drugs in the process. So, that\u2019s blood on the police officers\u2019 hands as well.<\/p>\nAnd, you know<\/em> the kidnapper has malicious intent, but it’s mostly because he’s jealous of our protagonist and purposely targeted him. In this way, all of the major characters are morally gray, which makes this movie feel dirty, but also more realistic because of it.<\/p>\n\n\nCredit: Toho<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
By The End Of It You Feel Like Nobody Wins<\/h2>\n High and Low<\/em> is one of those movies where nobody wins out in the end. I mean, you’re not expecting a happy ending, but I wasn’t particularly prepared for the dour conclusion that we get in the end, either.<\/p>\nBecause the kidnapper, played by Tsutomu Yamazaki, is apprehended and taken into custody. When we learn why<\/em> he did the kidnapping (it’s because he was envious of Gondo’s lifestyle) we both loathe him, but somewhat understand him. Yes, he was wrong, and yes, he should suffer the consequences, but we also sort of get his reasoning, since we’ve all been envious at times.<\/p>\nIn turn, Gondo is perplexed as to why the kidnapper would go to such lengths just because of jealousy, but he doesn’t even realize the lengths he himself went through just to get higher up in the company (even willing to sacrifice a child just because it wasn’t his).<\/p>\n
In this way, by the end of the film, you feel like nobody’s learned a lesson, and that everybody is much worse off than they were when they initially started, which sticks with you a lot more than if things had ended positively.<\/p>\n
It’s a masterpiece in international cinema, and I’m excited to see if Spike Lee and Denzel Washington can come anywhere close to matching its excellence. Only time will tell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Toho As a huge fan of Spike Lee, I\u2019m looking forward to seeing his latest film, Highest 2 Lowest, as part of the 2025 movie schedule. Before I see it, can I just rave about the 1963 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1970203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[340644,41089,350216,350215,39031,45167,350214,350213],"class_list":["post-1970202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-akira-kurosawa","tag-denzel-washington","tag-high-and-low","tag-kurosawa-film","tag-robert-de-niro","tag-spike-lee","tag-toho","tag-toshiro-mifune"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/While-Everybodys-Talking-About-Spike-Lees-Highest-2-Lowest-Can.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1970202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1970203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1970202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1970202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1970202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}