High and Low - Definition and Overview

High and Low (天国と地獄 Tengoku to jigoku) is a 1963 film directed by Akira Kurosawa It tells the story of an executive named Kingo Gondo Toshirô Mifune who mortgages all he has to stage leveraged buyout and gain control of the National Shoe Company, with the intent of keeping the company out of the hands of its other incompetent and greedy executives. Then he learns that his son has been kidnapped. Gondo is prepared to pay the ransom, until he learns that the kidnappers have mistakenly abducted the child of Gondo's chauffeur, instead of his own son. One thread of the plot revolves around how he deals with this ethical dilemma, while the other thread follows the police and their procedure as they put together the clues to find the kidnapped child. High and Low is remarkable, in part, because it very clearly illustrates the divide between the rich and the poor in 1960s-era Japan.