High and Low

High and Low (1963) — watch online Akira Kurosawa's crime thriller from Kurosawa Production and TOHO, starring Toshirō Mifune as Kingo Gondo, a Yokohama shoe executive who built his fortune from nothing.

One morning Gondo gets the call: his son has been taken, ransom demanded. He's ready to pay — until he learns the kidnappers grabbed the wrong boy. It's his chauffeur's child sitting in their hands, not his own. The law owes him nothing. Kurosawa spends the entire first act on that one choice. When detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai) takes over, the film pivots into an obsessive police procedural — street by street, clue by clue — shot in widescreen 35 mm by cinematographer Asakazu Nakai. The script is adapted from Ed McBain's novel King's Ransom, from the 87th Precinct series.

Released in 1963, the film is now a fixed reference point for anyone studying suspense cinema. Kurosawa frames wealth and poverty as two floors of the same city — the hilltop villa and the slums below share the same frame. 142 minutes that never drag. Watch High and Low (1963) online on iFILM.