High and Low (1963 film)

High and Low (Japanese: 天国と地獄, Hepburn: Tengoku to Jigoku, literally "Heaven and Hell") is a 1963 Japanese police procedural crime film directed and edited by Akira Kurosawa and written by Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijiro Hisaita, and Ryûzô Kikushima. The film is loosely based on the 1959 novel King's Ransom by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter). It follows the story of a board member for a Japanese company who is forced to make a decision between using a vast amount of wealth to gain executive control and helping his employee by lending him the money to free his child from kidnappers.

The film stars Toshiro Mifune as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy man who puts himself into debt in a risky bid to enact a hostile takeover of National Shoes, and Tatsuya Nakadai as Inspector Tokura, the man charged with solving the kidnapping case.