Stray Dog (1949)
"Nora inu" (original title)

During a sweltering summer, a rookie homicide detective tries to track down his stolen Colt pistol.

Director:

Akira Kurosawa

Writers:

Ryûzô Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa

Stars:

Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Awaji

4 wins.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Toshirô Mifune	...	Det. Murakami
Takashi Shimura	...	Det. Sato
Keiko Awaji	...	Harumi Namaki, showgirl
Eiko Miyoshi	...	Harumi's mother
Noriko Sengoku	...	Girl
Noriko Honma	...	Wooden Tub Shop woman
Reikichi Kawamura
Eijirô Tôno
Yasushi Nagata	...	(as Kiyoshi Nagata)
Katsuhei Matsumoto
Isao Kimura	...	Yusa
Minoru Chiaki	...	Girlie Show director
Teruko Kishi
Ichirô Sugai	...	Yayoi Hotel owner
Gen Shimizu	...	Police Inspector Nakajima

Storyline

Murukami, a young homicide detective, has his pocket picked on a bus and loses his pistol. Frantic and ashamed, he dashes about trying to recover the weapon without success until taken under the wing of an older and wiser detective, Sato. Together they track the culprit.

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Plot Keywords:

bus | shooting | chiaroscuro | japanese noir | police chase | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

31 August 1963 (USA)

Also Known As:

Stray Dog

Filming Locations:

Toho Studios, Tokyo, Japan

Company Credits

Production Co:

Film Art Association, Shintoho Film Distribution Committee, Toho Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

122 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The Swedish title of this film is "Revolvern" ("The Revolver"), even though the central plot device of the story is a semi-automatic pistol.

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Quotes

Det. Sato: Bad luck can make a man or destroy a man.

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Connections

Referenced in Uncertainty (2009)

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Soundtracks

"Sonatine in C Major, Op.20-1"
Composed by Friedrich Kuhlau

User Reviews

The brilliance of early Kurosawa

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.