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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 0715515030922
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: July 22, 2008
Running Time: 143 minutes
Sales Rank: 6136
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1962
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Editorial Review:
Album Description:
Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in Akira Kurosawa's highly influential domestic drama and police procedural High and Low. 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 class and contemporary Japanese society. Criterion is proud to present High and Low (Tengoko to jigoku) in this new high-definition digital transfer.
Amazon.com essential video:
Although best known for his samurai classics, Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa proved himself equally adept at contemporary dramas and thrillers, and 1962's High and Low offers a powerful showcase for Kurosawa's versatile skill. The great Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy industrialist who has just raised a large sum of money to execute his planned takeover of a successful shoe manufacturer. Fate intervenes when he receives a phone call informing him that his son has been kidnapped, and by unfortunate coincidence the ransom demand is nearly equivalent to the amount Mifune has raised for his corporate coup. A philosophical dilemma emerges when it is revealed that the executive's son is safe, and that it is actually his chauffeur's son who has been taken. What follows is both a tense detective thriller, as the police attempt to track down the kidnapper, and a compelling illustration of class division in Japan--the 'high and low' of the title. Far be it from Kurosawa to make a mere thriller, however; this loose adaptation of the Ed McBain novel King's Ransom provides the director with ample opportunity to develop a visual strategy that perfectly enhances the story's sociological themes. The Criterion Collection DVD of this extraordinary film is presented in the original 'Tohoscope' aspect ratio of 2.35:1. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Masterpiece
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, Eijirô Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni, adapted from the 1959 pulp novel King's Ransom. The book was ... Read More
Rating: - An eternal classic
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.
Rating: - High and Low
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 ... Read More
Rating: - the latest Criterion release
This is one of my top 5 best movies of all time. And I'm old enough to have seen it in several incarnations, starting with impossible to own, to a grainy VHS version with impossible-to-read subtitles, to the first Criterion release to this one. This latest version has all the bells and whistles a Kurosawa fan would want. Interviews with Mifune (and the actor who plays the kidnapper), a documentary on the making of the film and an interesting (if intrusive) commentary track from Stephen Prince.
But did anyone but me notice that this latest version of the film itself is not as crisp and clear as the former Criterion release of this film?
That last version was a revelation; I saw things (background, details and all that)that I'd never noticed before, in astounding clarity. This version seems darker and not as high quality. It was tough rating this one. I'm not sorry I bought it, but I'll probably go back to watching the original Criterion version when I want to see this film. Disc One rates 3 stars. Disc 2, with the extras, rates 5.
Rating: - Truly Complex Social Commentary
This film starts out with Gondo Kingo, a wealthy, self-made man who has risen from a humble shoe maker inside the National Shoe factory to an executive and minority owner of National Shoe (yes, that is the name, it's the English name, "National Shoe"). Having been a craftsman, Gondo wants to make sure that National Shoe will continue to make quality, well-made shoes. His fellow executives want to save money by switching to cheaply-made products that will fall apart soon. Gondo has engineered a plan to take over the company to maintain the shoe-crafting quality. To implement his plan, Gondo has mortgaged his entire fortune, including his large house that sits on top of a hill (the "High" in the title).
Right in the middle of all this, Takeuchi Ginjiro, a very angry medical intern, has engineered his own plan. He plans to kidnap Gondo's young son, Jun, and demand a huge ransom. Two of his drug-addicted coherts perform the kidnapping and Takeuchi makes the call to Gondo. The amount demanded is such that it would completely ruin Gondo if he were to pay it. He would even lose his large house, and would most likely lose his job and income. Gondo is willing to do this for his own son. However, it turns out that the kidnappers have made a mistake. They have kidnapped Shinichi, the son of Gondo's chauffeur, who is a widower of very modest means. The moral dilemma poses itself: will Gondo sacrifice his entire fortune to save the son of his chauffeur?
I don't want to "spoil" the film for ... Read More
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