High and Low

Wealthy shoe-company executive Kingo Gondo is on the verge of risking everything on a crucial business move when a kidnapper calls demanding an enormous ransom for what he believes is Gondo's son.

It soon emerges that the kidnapper mistakenly abducted the chauffeur's child instead. The ransom demand remains, leaving Gondo with a brutal moral choice: sacrifice his fortune and future to save another man's son or protect everything he has worked to achieve.

Akira Kurosawa transforms the dilemma into a gripping police procedural and a powerful study of class inequality, contrasting the privileged heights of Japanese society with the desperation existing below.