Early film-noir from Akira Kurosawa stars Toshiro Mifune as a rookie detective in post-war Japan who has his gun pickpocketed. With the help of seasoned veteran Takashi Shimura, he spends the rest of the film tracking it down, leading him into the Tokyo underworld and onto the path of a killer. While influenced by French detective novels (there is a lot of attention to the procedural aspects of detective work, similar to Jean-Pierre Melville), the film is really a portrait of a Tokyo trying to bulid itself back up from WWII. The black market runs rampant; Western and Japanese culture sit uncomfortably beside each other; and Western materialism has eroded the fabric of Japanese society. Film also precedes the work of John Woo and Michael Mann in illustrating the classic cop / killer duality. Just like the killer, Mifune also came out of service during the war to have all his belongings stolen; but unlike him, who despondently turned to a life of crime, he became a cop. The aspect of moral choice is an important theme here, as in many of Kurosawa’s films. In the riventing showdown between the two at the climax, you can barely even tell them apart. Moody cinematography by Asakazu Nakai is both noir-ish (night scenes often take place in the shadows) and lush (the scenes at the nightclub remind one of von Sternberg), conveying the extreme heat of the summer. No suprise that Mifune is stunning — conveying a controlled intensity and sorrow that is among his best work. Underappreciated film is key in the developing maturity of Kurosawa — it is the only film of his that is clearly influenced by Italian neo-realism — before exploding onto the international scene with Rashomon.

As with many of Criterion’s Kurosawa DVDs, the highlight is the excerpt from his Something Like An Autobiography, relating in his typical self-effacing humour the making of the film (which was the smoothest shoot he has ever done). There is also a good Japanese TV documentary, and a very informative (if over-explanatory) commentary by author Stephen Prince (The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa) not only detailing the making of the film, and placing it in the context of the chaotic post-WWII Japanese film industry, but also analyzing its themes and motifs very well.