Friday Night Flicks: High and Low
Save for Hitchcock’s Vertigo, no single film has had a more profound effect on the thriller genre than Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low.
Modern investigative hardboilers like the True Detective series* and Prisoners* owe everything they are to the film. The entire Taken franchise wouldn’t exist without it, and - with the swing of a saber - Liam Neeson’s career might’ve ended a few decades early on the sour note that is A Phantom Menace. Yikes. Even Finding Nemo lifts certain plot points from High and Low.
Here’s the flash synopsis:
A wealthy corporate executive mortgages his entire estate in order to purchase a majority percentage of a shoe-making company, the aptly named National Shoes. Moments after doing so, he receives a phone call demanding 30 million Yen for the safe return of his personal chauffeur’s child. A good portion of the ensuing action all takes place inside our protagonist’s living room, but the drama and dialogue are so intense that you don’t even realize this until halfway through the film when the scenery suddenly switches to the slums of Yokohama.
And then there’s that ending, which just might contain the most unsettling final ten seconds of any film I’ve ever seen. It all lends itself to a confounding, maze-like viewing experience, one with a plot that rips along like hell on wheels; blink and you just might get left in the dust. —Jackson Todd
*Watch these two if you haven’t, seriously.
