High and Low - Criterion Collection

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyoko Kagawa, Takashi Shimura, Tsutomu Yamazaki
Studio: Criterion
Category: DVD

List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $26.86
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Rating: 62 reviews
Sales Rank: 31345

Format: Black & White, Dvd-video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: Japanese (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 2
Running Time: 143 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6

MPN: IMEDCC1760D
UPC: 715515030922
EAN: 0715515030922
ASIN: B00180R072

Theatrical Release Date: 1962
Release Date: July 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Customer Reviews

   Read 57 more reviews...

Kurosawa - Master of Every Film Genre    January 4, 2009
Mark J. Fowler (Orange Park, Florida USA)
Akira Kurosawa created a canon of films that continue to influence movie-makers around the world. I have only seen about a dozen of them, but they are all masterpieces. High and Low is an English translation of Tengoku to jigoku, which is more literally translated "Heaven and Hell".

I've seen other reviews (some giving away too many spoilers, IMHO) mentioning the adaptation from "King's Ransom", an 87th Precinct police procedural by Evan Hunter - written under pseudonym Ed McBain. I've also seen others mention a little of the structure of the movie - essentially two acts first set in the home of Kingo Gondo (played by perhaps the greatest of Japanese actors Toshiro Mifune)and the second act a police procedural aimed at tracking down a kidnapper. I want to point out to the gentle reader that Kurosawa's structure is much more complex than that. The master director forces a change in point of view almost every fifteen minutes. In the opening moments we are introduced to Mr. Gondo, who is a shoe executive and has built his company up to a thing of pride and wealth. But Gondo is opposed by other executives at his company who point out that more money can be made if they don't work so hard at making QUALITY shoes. Gondo won't hear of it and with a little premature hubris informs the other executives that he is about to buy a majority of the company's shares and he will run the business as he always has, with an emphasis on producing good shoes.

During this portion of the film I gained more than a little respect for Gondo, who wants to be known more for the quality of his work than for wealth.

Immediately after this scene Gondo receives a phone call informing him that his son has been kidnapped and is being ransomed. The ransom will use up all the money he has put aside to buy the shares in his company. If he does not follow through and buy the majority share in his company, you know that the other vindictive executives will kick him to the curb. Complicating things even further - we find that the kidnapper mistakenly did not take Gondo's son, but instead took the son of Gondo's chauffeur. Now Gondo is faced with a triple heart-breaking decision. As a man of honor he wants to help the chauffeur's family. But if he does, he will be financially ruined.

The center transitioning portion of the film deals with the complicated method used to trade the 30 million yen in cash for the boy, and I won't say here whether the boy is returned dead or alive or whether or not the kidnapper receives the money, but this part is as exciting as any modern thriller.

The final part of the film is a taut, smart police procedural and we see the methodical steps used to track down the kidnapper, with many lovely human details such as the chauffeur going back to the scene of the crime in an attempt to play amateur detective and regain HIS honor (since Gondo gave away his fortune to ransom the chauffeur's son).

Along the way we see smart detectives, desperate heroin addicts, and real and caring humans. Perhaps no other film director saw people for what we are better than Kurosawa.

In Japanese with subtitles, so if you don't like to read or don't understand Japanese, keep on walking.



One of the greatest of all times    December 3, 2008
B. Rice (NYC, NY, USA)
For me this is one of the greatest works of cinema every created. I am not prone to hyperbole, but High and Low constantly remains at the top of my favorite movies list. Toshiro Mifune shines brightly.


Masterpiece    October 18, 2008
Cosmoetica (New York, USA)
High And Low (Tengoku To Jigoku; literally Heaven And Hell) is a film that is so perfect in every detail it shows how utterly silly similar Hollywood takes on the matter are, and were: think Ron Howard's and Mel Gibson's silly 1996 flick Ransom, or any of Alfred Hitchcock's crime dramas from the 1950s or 1960s. Yes, critics often resort to the copout that Hitchcock was not deep, but technically was great. True, to a degree, but one need only watch the rail car sequence in this film to see how staid, old fashioned, conservative, and utterly quaint Hitchcock's ideas on crime were. The truth is that Hitchcock really had no idea what drove criminals. Kurosawa did. To the Englishman, crimes were Freudian impelled, and committed by people with manifest things wrong with them. The claim he made was one merely had to be adept at spotting such things. Kurosawa shows that crime (as it does in reality) emerges from complex and obscure things. Its evildoers are often manifestly plain and their reasons never discernible. What drives High And Low to such greatness is that, even after all is revealed, the criminal apprehended, and the film at an end, the viewer is still pondering- in the best sense, and still unable to grasp how and why such a thing occurred. Yet, the film only gets to that point after peerless artistic and technical means.

The peerless screenplay was written by Kurosawa, Eijiro Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni, adapted from the 1959 pulp novel King's Ransom. The book was written by Ed McBain, pseudonym for Evan Hunter, which was the adopted name of Salvatore Albert Lombino. Using a variety of pen names, McBain penned pulp crime books that were three or four levels below Mickey Spillane. As Hunter, he wrote The Blackboard Jungle and the screen adaptation for Hitchcock's The Birds- probably the best film the great profile ever made. In short, under whatever guise, Hunter was no budding John Steinbeck. This makes the adaptation by Hisaita all the more impressive, for, while I never read the novel the film is derived from, as a youth I read a few McBain books and, even then, saw they were cardboard- both character- and plot-wise. Most criticisms of the film claim that, aside from the basic premise, the two works deviate greatly. One can thus likely (according to Occam's Razor) attribute the positives in this 143 minute (but swift paced) long film to the work of Hisaita and company, not McBain....Overall, High And Low is a great film, whose Americanized, like Vittorio De Sica's Ladri Di Biciclette; whose title has historically been mistranslated as The Bicycle Thief rather than Bicycle Thieves, it is a fortuitous gaffe, for the `wrong' translated title is far more evocative and less strident than its literal translation. The film's exploration and criticisms of social aspects of times and places past is timeless and the film shows how a great artist can mine true cosmic depth out of the must mundane of propositions that lesser artists make hackwork out of, such as Reiko's banal query: `What good is success if you lose your humanity?' The real tragedy of this film is not what occurs within its frame, but that even such banalities are not asked today in the modern world of filmmaking, much less extrapolated upon in such a proud and grand way. Akira Kurosawa was a giant of cinema, and world art, in general; a man whose output will be seen, centuries hence, the way Shakespeare's and Goya's are today, but that gigantism was built upon and borne by the desire to explore even the minutest moments of the human condition- not in a weepy, bleeding heart liberal sort of way, but in a deep, penetrating way that celebrated the best part of the human being: his intellect. In today's dumbed down Politically Correct society, such films are not only not made, but not even contemplated. When the history of turn of the millennium cinema is finally written, one of the key questions asked will be what happened to the basic striving for high art? Why did it become gauche to want to excel, and to want to treat an audience with respect? Of course, the film asks these same sorts of queries (along with the more banal ones it subverts) in regards to its lead character's professions, which only shows how great art recapitulates itself again and again, regardless of the changing circumstances of history, while bad art is entombed by its stolidity. Great artists know this, and, while glaring at his own reflection, at film's end, one senses a more peaceable Kingo Gondo knows it, too. Or, at least we hope he does. That we do says as much of Kurosawa as it does of us and our newer times.


An eternal classic    October 12, 2008
Michelangelo (Vilafranca (Spain))
Nowdays they don't do films like this.More than an inspiration for Mel Gibson's Ransom. The film is a masterpiece from beginning to end. Not a single moment wasted.Toshiro Mifune shows why is consider by many the most important japanese (or even asian) actor of all time.

Kurosawa ranks for me at the top of the best directors just sharing his place with John Ford.

The Criterion release is just great. Image and surround sound are clean and clear. I wish we have in Spain that marvelous catalog.


High and Low    August 12, 2008
Clinton Enlow (Kansas)


While I generally view Kurosawa's original Stray Dog as another in long line of his genre setting triumphs, High And Low is his masterpiece of the crime genre. High and Low was made in the middle of his career before Kurosawa's decline when his failure with Dodeskaden and getting kicked off of Tora, Tora, Tora caused him to go on hiatus for nearly ten years and drove him to attempt suicide. Thankfully Russia came along with a chance to adapt Dersu Uzala a film I wish was given the respectable double dip that Criterion is doing with their earlier releases.

I discovered High and Low early in my exploration of Kurosawa mainly overlooking it because it wasn't a samurai period film something I thought He had excelled in and only that. It happened by chance that I borrowed the orginal Criterion disc from a friend at work and quickly became engorged in any film made by the master. This film has the earmarks of Kurosawa film with social commentary, great characters, amazing black and white photography (the liner for the dvd makes mentions of lighting on the killers mirrored sunglasses during the finale), and scenes that are almost acted without any dialogue. Plus its just a great damn thriller.

High and Low was adapted from a 87th precinct novel from the late Ed McBain (Evan Hunter). It transplants the story from America to Yokohama in the middle of the summer. As the film begins shoe maker executive Gondo is having a meeting with subordinates where he outlines his plans to take over the company. The others are flummoxed as they want to create flimmsier shoes at cheaper prices and plan ..ping Gondo. Things come to a head when Gondo gets a phone call from a man who says He's kidnapped his son who was recently playing with the chauffers son around the house. Unfortunately his son comes in and as it turns out the chauffers son has been the one kidnapped. The Kidnapper discovers this also but won't budge on the ransom demand so Gondo is set up with a moral choice. He calls the cops despite the danger it poses but trys whatever He can to figure out a way not to pay the ransom.The cops arrive and then begins the first half of the film as a plan is devised to get back both the boy and the money. The second half of the film involves the police investigation trying to find out who the kidnapper is ending with a chase through the city in the night through back alleys and bars filled with foreigners all with as little dialogue as possible depending mainly on the emotions of the actors to sell the intensity. While the first half is more character driven the last half of the film is more procedural which of course is what appealed to me more.

Being the fan that I am the only way to describe High and Low would be to use the word impeccable. Its not the most loved Kurosawa film (something I'd disagree with) but it has the hallmarks of greatness in my opinion. While I love the procedural half of the film, the first set only in the Gondo house is intense thanks to the acting and directing talent. One of the great things that I've always loved about Kurosawa is his use of long takes and this helps build the intensity of the scenes as the camera flows around the living room watching the characters. On the acting side you have the two of Kurosawa's main group. Toshiro Mifune is always able to play intensity with bravado and flair but as the film progresses you can see him begining to falter in his plans not to pay the ransom demand. At the end He's given up everything He gained, all his riches gone until He's back to mowing his own lawn in one of the famous images of the film like He's trying to hold back the inevitable. The second actor is Tatsuya Nakadai as Chief Detective Tokoda. Nakadai worked on the last of Kurosawa's masterpieces (being Kagemusha and Ran) and this was a great almost simple performance. Tokoda heading up the investigation isn't a renegade cop character mostly simply dressed and handsome. But Nakadai has a commanding presence that demands you to watch him. I can't really describe what makes Nakadai Mifune's perfect accomplice in the film.

In the end its a perfect film in my mind, one of the few I wouldn't hesitate to brand it as such.


I was speaking on my original experience with the film which was Criterions orignal release. Around the time Criterion double dipped Seven Samurai and gave it the treatment it deserved I hoped they'd do the same for High and Low as the picture on the original disc was slightly cropped at the sides. On this set they've thankfully corrected that issue while adding some great features like a commentary from Stephen Prince and more of the It Is Wonderful to Create series that they've included on almost all of their Kurosawa releases. Its strange that original Criterion is still listed for sale as this is the only set worth buying in my opinion.