Rating: 4/5
Criterion Challenge 2023 | 38/52 | Spine #201-350 (#233)
An unrelenting and hot day. Sweat and cheap perfume engulf the bus.
Rookie cop Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) feels his pocket.
Someone stole his gun.
The sergeant sends him to the Larceny department for some leads.
He meets Detective Sato (Takashi Shimura), whose experience and knowledge of perpetrators will help track down his gun.
Murakami chases a lead that Sato said is a dead end. Yielding to his persistence, she gives him a clue to find his gun. Still, she insists she had no part in it.
The two share a beer. The lead lies on her back.
Look how pretty that is. In the last 20 years, I've completely forgotten how wonderful the stars are.
Her tips take him to Tokyo’s poorer regions. He sees the meager lives of those on the outskirts. How can the police protect them? What can finding his gun accomplish for them?
He tracks down a fence that handles guns but blows his cover. The fence cannot think straight as Murakami drags her into the sweltering interrogation room. He learns she was going to get his gun before he took her in. And that the thief used his weapon in a murder.
Bad luck either makes a man or destroys him. Are you gonna let it destroy you?
The pursuit in Kurosawa’s film noir is both all-consuming and futile. Every step closer to the truth only blurs the facts.
Despite Sato’s knowledge, his perspective remains rigid: a criminal is a criminal. As Murakami ventures into the darkness, though, he sees pieces of himself in the stories of the criminals they pursue.
This film is sharper and more refined than Kurosawa’s previous crime film, Drunken Angel. The third act is lengthy and moralizing, though not excessively so. Regardless, it nails the landing.
A little rain would help. The heat dulls your instincts.