Akira Kurosawa
Japan,
1963
Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in _High and Low_ (_Tengoku to jigoku_), the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. Adapting Ed McBain's detective novel _King's Ransom,_ Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.