HIGH AND LOW
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: **1/2 out of ****
Akira Kurosawa's 1963 film HIGH AND LOW has an interesting premise: A captain of industry is told his son has been kidnapped and a ransom is demanded. Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is ready to pay the kidnapper's exorbitant demand of 30 million yen, when he finds out his son is safe and sound. Apparently, Gondo's chauffeur's son was kidnapped instead in a case of mistaken identity. Gondo is then faced with the question, "Would you pay the ransom for a child that is not your own?" When the movie is over, it is a question which every viewer must surely ask himself.
Even if we think Gondo's answer would be an unqualified "yes", he is in a situation which makes matters complicated. Gondo is a large shareholder in National Shoes, one of the leading shoe manufacturers in Japan, and he has been approached by a few other shareholders with a scheme to take over control of the company by pooling their holdings and voting out the current company head. However, Gondo doesn't want to partner with these other men, who we find are unscrupulous. Instead, he has carefully borrowed money to amass an increasing number of shares and with one last purchase, would be able to take control by himself. If he pays the ransom, he would neither be able to make the last, biggest purchase, nor pay off his loans. Gondo therefore faces the dilemma of whether to ignore the kidnapper and achieve his dream and assure lifetime security for himself and his family, or pay the ransom and put himself in ruin. It is this predicament that occupies the first third of the film. We know Gondo is a good man who helped build National Shoes from the ground up. Whereas the other shareholders believe they need to make shoes which will wear out faster so they will be bought more frequently, Gondo insists they continue to make quality shoes which people will want to wear. "Shoes carry the weight of the entire body," he says. His is a character who would get our sympathy no matter which decision he made, for we know his reasons would be sound.
HIGH AND LOW plays itself out in three acts and an epilogue. The first act is by far the best and creates the most tension as we watch Gondo struggle with the decision he must eventually make. Trapped in his house atop a hill and under surveillance by the kidnapper, Gondo is at constant odds with himself, his family, and the police. Once Gondo has made his decision, however, the film plays out like just about any other detective drama. The second act is mildly interesting as we watch the police gather information on the kidnapper and prepare to track him down. The last act is the manhunt and pursuit of the kidnapper through the seedy sections of the city. Unfortunately, this part is unnecessarily long with too many drawn-out scenes which verge on boredom. This third act is also single-handedly responsible for making the film longer than it should be, at nearly two and a half hours. Looking at each scene, it seems as though Kurosawa was too preoccupied with composition and imagery (at which he has always been a master), and did not pay enough attention to pacing.
The epilogue is a short interaction between Gondo and the kidnapper, and is decidedly insufficient. Although we expect the scene to tie everything together, the revelations about the kidnapper's motivations are all too simple and unsatisfactory, given the wonderfully thought-provoking content in the first third of the film. HIGH AND LOW deserves a good rating just for that beginning portion, but the rest of the film unfortunately just drags it down.
Review posted November 24, 1997
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