Stray dog = Nora Inu

A young detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) has his police gun pick-pocketed on a packed bus in Tokyo. Fearing dismissal, Murakami trawls Tokyo’s underbelly encountering a slew of criminals, black market gunrunners and sleazy types in his quest to recover his weapon and halt the murders occurring at the hand of the thief. In Kurosawa’s ninth feature, the pace is languorous, reflecting the oppressive heat of Occupied Tokyo, sapping the resistance of the many characters that pepper the narrative, sweating their way through an excessive heatwave, battling poverty whilst living amid slums and atrocious post-war conditions. Kurosawa presents a fine example of a noir detective movie, exhibiting his technical virtuosity in a series of vignettes as Murakami chases thieves through grimy back alleys, and sleazy dancehalls, as his naivete ebbs away. Gloomy, intense and atmospheric, this film, about an obsessive quest, delineates a loss of innocence for a rookie cop in search of truth where poverty and degradation causes desperation and amorality to thrive in an urban setting. In Japanese with English subtitles.