High and Low (Blu-Ray, #24)

Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper inHigh and Low(Tengoku to jigoku), the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. Adapting Ed McBain’s detective novelKing’s Ransom,Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• Restored high-definition digital transfer, with original four-track surround sound, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio
• Audio commentary by Akira Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince
• A thirty-seven-minute documentary on the making ofHigh and Low,created as part of theToho MasterworksseriesAkira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
• Rare interview with actor Toshiro Mifune from 1984
• Interview with actor Tsutomu Yamazaki
• Theatrical trailers from Japan and the U.S.
• PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey OBrien and, for the Blu-ray edition, an on-set account by Japanese-film scholar Donald Richie