Stray Dog (1949)

Stray Dog (PG)

"Hot Dog"

Master director Akira Kurusawa casts his greatest star, Toshiro Mifune, against type as an idealistic rookie police officer in 1940s Tokyo.  Mifune is distraught at the prospect of losing his position when he loses his police issue pistol, become frantic when it is discovered the gun has been used in a recent.  Mifune is subdued yet boiling under the surface, but the real masterstroke of Stray Dog is the image of post-war post-surrender life in Japan.  The slums, the people, the empty streets, the real life locations; they all echo ghost like and sadly angry from the past in stark black and white photography.  Other pleasures are the vintage Japanese baseball footage, the above-the-law attitudes of the underworld denizens,  Mifune has done better police procedurals (High and Low), but Mifune's wise old partner provides the humor and Toshiro provides the struggle between law and order and the law of the wild:  Kill or be killed.

8 Somebody install some Sony Air Conditioning out of 10 (GREAT)