Stray Dog (1949)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Starring Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Awaji, Eiko Miyoshi, Isao Kimura, Noriko Honma, Ichirô Sugai, Minoru Chiaki.

Rookie detective Murakami (Mifune) gets his revolver stolen during a bus ride, and as if he isn’t guilt-ridden enough about that, he then learns that it was used in a killing, which sends him on an undercover mission to get it back. Neorealist crime pic translates the hardboiled style through Kurosawa’s depth of cinematic shorthand knowledge (The Naked City was an acknowledged inspiration); the shabby settings and palpable heat are characters unto themselves, though the on-the-nose symbolism could have been handled with greater finesse. Mifune’s rigid, bottled-up anxiety shows that he was more than just a celluloid fireball; he’s contrasted by the wise and more relaxed veteran cop played by Shimura—an archetypal pairing, but still an effective one. Stunning climax ranks among noir’s most tensely exciting sequences. Antecedent to the buddy cop and police procedural dramas that would soon be all the rage in the States, yet it took almost fifteen years for this film to be officially imported for American screenings.

86/100