It started out great for me. The tension in the first half is amazing. The second part gets a bit slow. Especially the police meeting went on for way to long in my opinion. Still, I think it’s a solid film!

I'd rather be told the cruel truth than be fed gentle lies.

[Tivify] An extraordinary example of creating tension and suspense with minimal elements, especially in the masterful first part that takes place exclusively in Gondo's apartment. There are all the elements of Akira Kurosawa's cinema brought together in one of the most intense thrillers, with a description of Japan divided into impoverished classes that look up the top of the hill at the arrogant splendor of economic success. Splendid actors, an excellent script and a masterful sense of pacing serve to enrich the film.

I'm still in shock from one particular scene. The whole movie runs in stark black and white, and then suddenly, Kurosawa hits you with that pink smoke. It's such a bold, radical touch: a ransom signal rising in color against a world drained of it. And it's not just a visual trick. The pink cuts right through the film's moral grayness, unsettling without the violence of pure red, and marking the collision of "high" and "low" in a way you can't ignore. That burst of color feels like Kurosawa breaking the frame itself to remind us what's at stake. Now imagine seeing that in 1963, when nobody expected any color in a black-and-white film, it must have been absolutely unforgettable.

I have to admit that I expected a bit more as this movie and director are held in high regards by so many famous movie critics. Don't get me wrong, there are some fascinating themes on display in the first half of the movie. But it just seemed rather odd that those themes seemed to be tossed aside in the second half for a rather pedestrian case about police work. The movie was at its best in Gondo's home. follow me at https://IHATEBadMovies.com or facebook IHATEBadMovies