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Edition: Normal
Genre: World Cinema
Region Code: Region B
Certificate: 12
Label: BFI
Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Yukata Sada, Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyoko Kgawa, Tatsuya Mihashi, Toshirô Mifune, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kenjirô Ishiyama, Yutaka Sada, Kyôko Kagawa, Takashi Shimura, Takeshi Katô, Isao Kimura, Akira Kuroasawa
Director: Akira Kuroasawa, Akira Kurosawa
Number of Discs: 1
Duration: 149 minutes
Audio Languages: Japanese
Subtitle Languages: English
Based on an Ed McBain novel, High and Low is a gripping police thriller starring Toshiro Mifune. Wealthy industrialist Kingo Gondo (Mifune) faces an agonising choice when a ruthless kidnapper, aiming to snatch his young son, takes the chauffeur’s boy by mistake – but still demands the ransom, leaving Gondo facing ruin if he pays up.
An anatomy of the inequalities in modern Japanese society, High and Low is a complex film noir, where the intense police hunt for the kidnapper is accompanied by penetrating insight into the kidnapper’s state of mind. Kurosawa’s virtuoso direction provides no easy answers, and in short, the police and the criminal as equally brutal, but nonetheless human.
Special Features: •Presented in High Definition•Newly recorded audio commentary by Japanese film expert Jasper Sharp•Akira Kurosawa: It is Wonderful to Create – High and Low (2002, 38 mins): the director discusses how High and Low came to exist, and how specific sequences were filmed. Also features interviews with actors Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyoko Kagawa, Takeshi Kato, and Tatsuya Mihashi, as well as cameraman Takao Saito and Masaharu Ueda and script supervisor Teruyo Nogami•**FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet with new essay on the film by Alex Barrett, archive essay by Philip Kemp and an original review from Monthly Film Bulletin
