Early Kurosawa masterpiece; arguably, his first. *Stray Dog* grabs your attention immediately, with the superbly weird close-ups of the mangy dog panting behind the opening credits. Following the credits, the director delivers a clinic on the art of montage, utilizing quick nonlinear cutting that makes the narrative get straight to the point: ashamed rookie cop (an impossibly young Toshiro Mifune) explaining to his boss that he lost his gun; then a jump back to earlier in the day during target practice; then a quick cut to a scene on a crowded city bus in which the Colt gets lifted. Properly impatient with exposition, Kurosawa has his editor wield the cutting knife with ruthless precision. Only after the premise is established does the movie slow down.
Indeed, *Stray Dog* tends to meander during the next two hours. There's a famous 8-minute sequence in which Mifune, going undercover in search of his gun, wanders through the detritus (human and otherwise) of a black-market underworld in bombed-out post-War Tokyo. These 8 minutes contain zero exposition, containing instead some stunning on-location montage from 2nd-unit guy Honda (who directed *Godzilla* later) that unabashedly turns into scathing social commentary, and this, in the final analysis, is far more interesting than the catch-as-catch-can plot about a rookie detective's stolen gun. Owing stylistic and thematic debts to old Eisenstein pictures as well as then-current trends in Italian cinema, Kurosawa fashions his own polemic about post-War Japan that can't help but fascinate historians. Those of us in the West who have our own perceptions about what Japan is like (the stereotype is that it's a spiffy country inhabited by spiffy people) will be shocked at the filthy conditions and depravity glimpsed at in this footage. It's a land in a time and a place where women steal pistols for criminals in order to score rice-ration cards.
The movie is ultimately about how a person maintains a sense of morality in such conditions. Mifune's cop is, after all, not too different from the psychopath whom he pursues: both are veterans in their late twenties who ended up on entirely different paths which have suddenly converged. One reviewer below complained about Kurosawa's "facile humanism" (how can humanism be "facile"?), but I rather call it a heroic humanism. Mifune is an honorable young man who chooses to be a hero: after all, it would've been easier to quit the force after enduring the shame of getting his gun stolen, and it certainly would've been easier to roam the black-markets like his antagonist Yusa and generally cave in to psychopathy. Kurosawa is suggesting that if a man (or a nation) chooses the right path, redemption can be found. Not for the last time, Kurosawa makes heroism and simple decency thrilling to watch.
All in all, *Stray Dog* is a landmark achievement for Kurosawa and for cinema in general. It stands proudly beside his more famous achievements in the decade that followed. 8 stars out of 10.
Indeed, *Stray Dog* tends to meander during the next two hours. There's a famous 8-minute sequence in which Mifune, going undercover in search of his gun, wanders through the detritus (human and otherwise) of a black-market underworld in bombed-out post-War Tokyo. These 8 minutes contain zero exposition, containing instead some stunning on-location montage from 2nd-unit guy Honda (who directed *Godzilla* later) that unabashedly turns into scathing social commentary, and this, in the final analysis, is far more interesting than the catch-as-catch-can plot about a rookie detective's stolen gun. Owing stylistic and thematic debts to old Eisenstein pictures as well as then-current trends in Italian cinema, Kurosawa fashions his own polemic about post-War Japan that can't help but fascinate historians. Those of us in the West who have our own perceptions about what Japan is like (the stereotype is that it's a spiffy country inhabited by spiffy people) will be shocked at the filthy conditions and depravity glimpsed at in this footage. It's a land in a time and a place where women steal pistols for criminals in order to score rice-ration cards.
The movie is ultimately about how a person maintains a sense of morality in such conditions. Mifune's cop is, after all, not too different from the psychopath whom he pursues: both are veterans in their late twenties who ended up on entirely different paths which have suddenly converged. One reviewer below complained about Kurosawa's "facile humanism" (how can humanism be "facile"?), but I rather call it a heroic humanism. Mifune is an honorable young man who chooses to be a hero: after all, it would've been easier to quit the force after enduring the shame of getting his gun stolen, and it certainly would've been easier to roam the black-markets like his antagonist Yusa and generally cave in to psychopathy. Kurosawa is suggesting that if a man (or a nation) chooses the right path, redemption can be found. Not for the last time, Kurosawa makes heroism and simple decency thrilling to watch.
All in all, *Stray Dog* is a landmark achievement for Kurosawa and for cinema in general. It stands proudly beside his more famous achievements in the decade that followed. 8 stars out of 10.