Stray Dog

*-Catch it on TV **-Worth a Rental ***-Buy it Used/On Sale ****-Buy it New/Top Dollar *****-Worthy of a Blind Buy

Until early May of 2004 I was, for lack of a better label, an Akira Kurosawa virgin. I had never had the privilege of watching one of his masterpieces and every time I had the opportunity something got in the way. In May I found myself with a hundred dollars (a small fortune to a high school student with no job) and staring at Kurosawa's Four Samurai Classics dvd collection at Best Buy. The box set included the Criterion editions of Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro priced at $82.99. I saw this as a bargain since Criterion edition dvds usually run around $40 a pop, so I bought it without hesitation. After viewing all four films over a weekend I craved more Kurosawa and spent what money I had left on Rashomon, thus beginning my foray into Kurosawa's art.

I have been extremely satisfied with the five Kurosawa films I have seen and was pleased to receive Stray Dog in the mail today from Netflix. I began watching it within about 20 minutes of getting it and from the beginning I was hooked. The film stars Toshiro Mifune as rookie detective Murakami in 1940's Tokyo. Murakami's pistol has been stolen from him while riding a crowded bus on a hot day. Disgraced at himself for having lost such an important item he sets out to find the culprit and enlists the help of veteran detective Sato (played by Takashi Shimura). Together the two detectives hunt down the man responsible. However, things get worse and their investigation intensifies as they learn that the weapon is used in an armed robbery. Sato becomes a mentor to Murakami and takes him under his wing as they get closer and closer to their perpetrator.

Toshiro Mifune's performance is magnificent. He is not the over confident Kikuchiyo from Seven Samurai, or the calm and cool ronin from both Yojimbo and Sanjuro; instead he is a rookie detective in 1940's Tokyo. Mifune portrays a Murakami filled with tension and self-loathing. As his gun is used in more acts of violence, Murakami sinks deeper and deeper emotionally by placing the blame entirely on himself. Takashi Shimura is equally impressive as the veteran Sato. These two actors play very well off of eachother. Their chemistry alone is enough to make you want to see the film, luckily it is not the only reason. Akira Kurosawa tells the story with amazing pacing that seems slow but never boring. The use of forshadowing had little to do with subtilty and added to the tension of the film as the detectives closed in on their suspect until the tense climax, which I will not spoil for you.

All in all Stray Dog was two hours of intelligent storytelling combined by skillful acting. I would be tempted to give it a ***** rating solely because it is Kurosawa, however he gave me enough reasons to do so in the film itself.

With his penchant for incorporating "Western" ideas into his films, Kurosawa hits yet another home run with his take on the crime film. As ever, he manages to make scenes that would (in the hands of a lesser director) seem boring become absolutely riveting. Mifune's ride on the trolley, when he loses his gun, for instance; or the scene where he has to explain the situation to his superiors (and the subsequent search through police files for a suspect); or the long undercover sequence. We can almost feel his frustration. The tension mounts. And yet again we have the brilliant Shimura playing off of Mifune, speaking in carefully modulated tones as he dispenses advice to the hotheaded young detective. If ever there was a more perfect combination of performers in cinema history, I never saw them.

Impressive as some of the later films of Kurosawa are - "Kagemusha" and "Ran" for example, I have to confess that it is his early work, particularly those set in modern Japan as opposed to its feudal past, that I find myself returning to with greater pleasure. He was not one of those artists who necessarily got better and better, rather was he one who continued to take on different challenges, not always with the same degree of success, as "Dodesukaden" and "Dreams" were to prove. I have long regarded the 1952 "Ikiru" as his greatest achievement, with the three modern day day films starring Toshiro Mifune that precede it, "Drunken Angel", "The Quiet Duel" and "Stray Dog", fascinating consolidations of his skill as a director. "Stray Dog" revels in technical accomplishment. It tells the story of a policeman who, after experiencing the theft of his gun while travelling on a bus, embarks on an odyssey to retrieve it. Questions of morality and honour loom large as they do in any Kurosawa film, with the quest becoming ever more urgent as evidence is gathered of the weapon being used in criminal activities. What might be regarded as plain bad luck in another culture is here seen as a matter of shame and dishonour by the unfortunate policeman, that has to be addressed forsaking all else. The search is pursued in a dazzling series of chases, encounters and interrogations that leaves the audience, like the hero, exhausted at times. The weather is hot throughout, characters sweat profusely and sometimes everything erupts in a tropical downpour - no other director uses rain so physically. Perhaps, at over two hours, "Stray Dog" is a little too long to sustain its material. It sags a little in the middle, but the chases at the outer ends of the film are wonderfully done, particularly the penultimate sequence where the cop pursues his prey through vegetation where city and countryside meet. You can almost smell the steamy atmosphere of a morning after rain where everything is about to heat up again. Possibly the other two Mifune films of the same period have the edge on this. They are more meditative works, their lengths more sustainable. But, for sheer cinematic bravado, this is the one.

STRAY DOG stands as the legendary Akira Kurosawa's first real masterpiece, noteworthy for at least two big reasons: the style - classic American film noir (rich, velvety b&w atmospheres), enhanced with a touch of Italian neo-realism (great use of diverse locations, which provide a great view of day-to-day postwar Japan), and the star, a young Toshiro Mifune, whose truly collaborative association with Kurosawa was cemented here, and would grow in spectacular fashion during the subsequent 16 years.

Mifune became as much of an international icon as Kurosawa, and this is the first film where it's easily evident why. As an example of film noir, STRAY DOG offers plenty of gripping suspense and moral complexity, and holds up well alongside classics like THE BIG HEAT, THE KILLING or THE MALTESE FALCON. Kurosawa touched upon international influences to an unprecedented degree in Japanese film (the internationalist impulses of Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi or Mikio Naruse are just as deep and varied, but far more discreetly deployed), Kurosawa also skillfully highlights Japanese specifics (the rookie cop expecting to be fired, even accepting the possibility in an apologetic fashion, only to be assured that he will not be fired - this would not occur in a similar American setting), while always linking the same details to universals: honor, nobility, responsibility. This would become the thread linking Kurosawa's celebrated period/samurai films to his contemporary dramas. STRAY DOG was perhaps the first of his films where it truly resonates in a global fashion - a timeless, classic film.

This early Kurosawa film interested me not only as a historical object, but because, as in every one of his films I've seen so far, the moral and philosophical implication of the story carries as much weight as the dramatic and poetic aspects. As another commenter said here, "When was the last time you saw a film where the central character had something called a moral imperative." To me it's extremely gratifying to find directors like Kurosawa, Bergman, and today's Hirokazu Kore-eda who treat moral themes seriously and with dignity, and don't shy away from difficult questions.

I was also intrigued by how almost every scene bears, already, the stamp of Kurosawa's unique vision as a director. I have no idea how this comes about, but there's just something there, almost like a fingerprint, that says "Kurosawa" unmistakeably. I would have to leave it to more gifted and better schooled viewers than myself to explain it, but I love seeing it. In part, I suppose it's due to the exceptionally fine cinematographers that Kurosawa habitually worked with.

I think the film is about thirty minutes too long, but if I have to see a film that's a bit too long, I'm at least glad it's by Kurosawa!