1963 Directed: Akira Kurosawa, Written: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Ryūzō Kikushima, Eijirō Hisaita

Score 4/5

Very good police/detective drama once it gets going. As much as I enjoy “bottle episodes” (where the majority of a tv show episode/movie takes place in one location with one set of characters going through a usually mental or interpersonal conflict), a bottle episode about convincing one guy to pony up a kidnapper’s ransom money didn’t exactly grab me. Gondo is the only one with the personal wealth to pay the ransom, and I think where it fell flat for me is that Gondo’s side of the argument is very weak. For there to even be a film, this could really only play out one way (unless it was a very different film).

For a while Gondo’s business subordinate is on his side, but not very meaningfully. He threatens to go to Osaka and deliver the ransom money to a stock broker (the stock needed to maintain Gondo’s position in his company), but it doesn’t take more than Gondo saying “no” a couple times for him to return the check and then go about his own subplot side-business (selling Gondo out). Gondo is trying to keep all that info in parentheticals secret from everyone in the room as well, so for a long while in this movie it’s just “give the kidnapper the ransom money!”, “no!”, occasionally broken up by a phone call from the mysterious criminal. I the viewer was as worn down as Gondo when he finally kinda-of-his-own-volition agreed to pay the ransom.

Thankfully it’s really great once the movie is allowed to tell the actually interesting part of the story! The police procedural work is paced really well. One of the best sequences of the movie is basically exposition where every detective team at the precinct fills in the lead investigator (and us) on their current progress, and it’s so interesting. The way they track down and trap the kidnapper is gripping, and his performance in one of the final scenes is fantastic.