A lost pistol, one police officers search through the sleazy side of post war Tokyo to track it down and save his honour by doing so - a classic film noir plot. This is a Kurosawa movie, so of course it is executed brilliantly. This film is full of dazzling sequences with highly imaginative and technically adept editing and camera work. This may be his first 'great' movie, but in some sections it betrays his relative inexperience as a film maker - it slightly loses focus in the central part of the movie and he occasionally over-eggs his metaphors (something Kurosawa was always inclined to do). He is also clearly experimenting with different techniques, he hasn't quite found his own unique film language. But it is still a truly great film, it deserves to rank up there with the best noir movies from America and France.<br /><br />There are many pleasures here - the vivid scenes set in a crippled and poverty stricken Tokyo - the individual vignettes - the pain of the widower who curls up in agony at the thought of his dead wife - the young dancer torn in her loyalties to the one man who showed her generosity - and even the twisted agony of the murderer as he realizes he has lost his freedom. The penultimate chase sequence is truly masterful, its hard to imagine it being ever done better - every element of it, the chase, the cutting to a piano playing lady, curious at the noise, the final vision of children playing and a flower blowing in the wind - stunning.<br /><br />Most of all, this is a morally complex movie - the constant unease of the policeman who realizes how close he is to the 'stray dog' nags away at the movie and becomes stunningly real at the end, as they both lay exhausted in the grass side by side, almost like sated lovers. Kurosawa was far ahead of his time in his portrayal of how chance determines how we end up, but having fallen on one side of good or evil, people build up walls to emphasize their separation from the 'other'. As a new policeman, Mifune is tortured by his knowledge of how similar he is to the killer, but his older, more mature colleague assures him that he will learn to hate them, to see them as beneath him.<br /><br />As with most of Kurosawas movies, there are no simple conclusions - while there may be superficial 'morals' to his tales, look beneath and there are layers upon layers of complexity and ambiguity, but always within a context of his sympathetic humanism. His films may be bleak but they never give in to cynicism or irony.<br /><br />This may not be quite as accomplished as his later 'High and Low', but it is still a terrific thriller that puts the vast majority of modern movies to shame. Strongly recommended.