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Wow! Such a good movie.

I wanted to but couldn't!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

STRAY DOG is a little more serious movie unlike the classic noir. Kurosawa was definitely influenced by the genre. The film is not so dark and slightly turning neorealism. A good detective story. The characterization is excellent. The story has depth. As always, the director leaves a strong sense of realism. Heat wave or heat stroke. Unbearable heat of the early film works incredibly realistic. The real picture is repeated in several frames. Kurosawa was a master of technique and simply seeks to everyone stay focused. The film unfortunately has gaps. Interesting is the feeling after the film. As I looked to the police story that normally happens in a neighborhood. The film is a kind of chase. However, this "journey" from one place to another shows us the post-war Japan. I'm convinced myself that neorealism and noir are great combination.Unbearable heat and extremely "hot" case. The change in expression is probably a change in Japanese cinema. The similarities between the hero and villain are obvious. These are issues of self-awareness and understanding. They chose different paths in life, but basically they are not different. Therefore, this can not be described as a classic game between cop and criminal.Toshiro Mifune as Detective Murakami, the former soldier is not a strong character. That's the point. On your job well, but must have a superior or rather guide.Finally I must commend the music, which fits in a tense atmosphere.

So once again Kurosawa, and all players involved, completely demonstrate their endless versatility and ability to approach any subject. Although it's not necessary, I'd recommend watching Drunken Angel first, as Stray Dog is essentially as continuation of the post- war malaise that hung heavy in the atmosphere there, to the point where here it actually has important character and narrative implications. Drunken Angel was particularly memorable in its use of a single stagnant pool that as the one unchanging image of the film, reminded us of humanity's lingering corruption, and on a more national scale, the zeitgeist of Japan at the time. This was in the wake of the bomb, and here the air is oppressively heavy, characters are always marked by sweat and are habitually wiping their foreheads, people who populate the streets look by turns untrustworthy and suspicious of passers-by, many of them are emaciated and seem displaced, and in this fetid and feverish air there's a general feeling of a swelling, something expanding until bursting in exhaustion. The opening-credits shot of a panting dog captures the nature of the film pretty succinctly; fatigue, wear, and perseverance. What really drives this steady progression of overwhelming heat is the simple act in the beginning of the film of Det. Murakami's (Toshiro Mifune) pistol being stolen, triggering an intense and labouring journey through the city, where every moment in which the gun is clutched in the hands of a criminal, and every time it's used for some crime, the anxiety is increased immeasurably. Paul Thomas Anderson (who used this lost gun element in Magnolia, one of my favourite films) said that we feel every punch of the film, and golly is that true. Much of this dramatic urgency is spurred by Mifune, who as Murakami is everything his character in Drunken Angel, or any other Mifune I've seen, is not. He's awkward, naïve, earnest, but physically unsure of himself. Gone is the swaggering gangster or rabid bandit or stoic samurai. Kurosawa was an innovative director, and has been endlessly influential, so it's no surprise that here what we get is an early progenitor of the procedurals and everybody's favourite buddy- cop dynamic. Lethal Weapon is like children's role play compared to this though. Before he is paired with Takashi Shimura, the other detective, we get a lengthy sequence of Murakami tailing a woman across the city that he knows is involved with the disappearance of his gun. This chase has that street-level intensity that is a defining characteristic of the noir, and as he chases her through the city they pass through alleys and bars and even take a ride on public transport, and through all this it's easy to imagine this being Los Angeles or New York. Eventually he corners her to a restaurant, which she holes up in. Being the pleasant and patient man he is, rather than hounding away at her, he waits outside for hours until she eventually gives in and talks to him. All of this was worth it simply for the beautiful composition of this scene, in which a harmonica player occupies the foreground, as Mifune sits dejectedly behind him, face drawn to his legs. After the woman tells him that his gun is lost somewhere in the gun racket of the city's seedy underbelly, he knows he'll have to go undercover, poor bastard. There's a wonderful moment where they both look up at the stars, and not only does this a offer a chance to breathe after being overwhelmed by the gravity of the streets, but it's perhaps also something of a ancestor to that iconic shot in Rashōmon, which stares directly into the piercing sun.The sequence in which a dirtied and ragged Mifune goes undercover and wanders the streets looking for a way into the gun racket perhaps goes on for too long, as its point was made as soon as we understand that the people are a combination of suspicious and indifferent towards him and he is having no success. But I think perhaps what Kurosawa is underlining is the actual condition of these people, and I think it's no coincidence that we see emaciated and forlorn individuals who all seem so fixed in their places they're like unquestionable parts of the environment. It's a post-war distress, and when Mifune is partnered with Shimura, their dinner conversation that they have (In Shimura's house, who as the older, experienced cop, is obligated to invited Mifune over for dinner, because that's how buddy-cop dynamics work) returns to this idea of the war as a generational dividing line. "Maybe there are no bad people, only bad situations" Mifune wonders, who despite being a war veteran, still has a reserve of optimism which he clutches on to. "Leave the writing to the writers" Shimura retorts, as he's a house of wisdom, a man who's seen all there is to see, who knows what he knows and has no room left for philosophical changes of heart. Kurosawa loved the master/pupil dynamic, and this is employed brilliantly in the police procedural format, so as the two detectives scour the city through blood and sweat, dirt and shimmering heat, from a Baseball game to a Burlesque show, getting closer to the man with the gun, the final confrontation itself rests purely on the shoulders of Mifune, in what is a beautiful unburdening of all that accumulated tension. What ultimately you have here is a police story that is an evocative journey through post-war Japan, a gradual peeling back of layer after layer in Kurosawa side-wipe fashion that is no less thrilling than any of its American counterparts.

'Stray Dog' is Akira Kurosawa's 'Ladri di biciclette'. But, the movie doesn't reach the top level of Vittorio De Sica's masterpiece.In 'Stray Dog', the main tool (a gun) of a homicide investigator is stolen. He offers his resignation to his boss, for he wants to become a private detective in order to recover his gun. Instead, his boss assigns him as an assistant to a senior homicide detective. Together they will try to find the thief and get the pistol back.'Stray Dog' is an outstanding picture of the Americanized Japanese society after WW II with its baseball and its nightclubs. It is a society split between the wealthy few (also the black marketeers) and the many poor. The majority of the population is struggling to live decently. Both the thief and the homicide detective are war veterans, whose luggage was stolen on their way back home. But, they chose diametrically opposite 'professions'.A must for all Akira Kurosawa fans.

This police procedural has the interesting premise of a cop obsessed with finding his stolen gun, and his sense of responsibility for everything that happens because of the theft. It's an interesting idea, a sort of cop version of Bicycle Thieves, but it's a bit slow and static. For all the comments here that call it a film noir, it lacks that sort of intensity, although it does have interesting anti-noir qualities - much of it takes place in daylight among people wearing light colored clothes.Even at its weakest, there are interesting Kurosawa touches throughout, most notably the use of the oppressive summer heat as a character in the film. And while some moments feel overlong, such as the cop's undercover work, there are nice bits like his dogging a suspect or that suspect's later interrogation by an older and wiser cop.The movie hits high Kurosawa in its fantastic forth. From a stunning image of a girl twirling in a dress just as a thunderstorm breaks,the film is everything you expect from the great director, as though a more experienced Kurosawa had jumped into a time machine to do the last part, and the final confrontation is brilliant, even if the movie's last short scene is as flat and dry as the first ones.Kurosawa has made much better movies, but there is enough of interest in this one that fans of the director should check it out at some point.