MovieChat Forums > Tengoku to jigoku (1963) Discussion > Movie could've been better if...

Movie could've been better if...


This is still a great movie, I just felt the whole part where they knew who it was but wanted to catch him for a capital offense and decides to follow him and catch him for buying and killing with heroin was a little unrealistic. At 2 hours and 20 minutes this movie felt a tad long. High and Low is actually one of my favorite Kurosawa movies but I feel like once they knew who it was, we should have just gone to the jail and ended the movie. I know, we want the criminal dead or endure a harsh punishment, but that whole part could have been made shorter. The 2 hours were sensational, taut, ingenious, suspenseful, and then you got the final 20 minutes or so of following the criminal around that rather slowed the excitement down. Still, I'm pleasantly surprised at how modern this movie seems. High and Low, 9/10.

Lucy: "I didn't tell a soul, and they all promised to keep it a secret."

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I totally agree. This was a great movie that went from a character study of Gondo to a good little cop drama and was intriguing, especially the last 45 minutes, but it did not need to be that long at all. There were several scenes that could've been cut to make it a more reasonable 2 hours. 2 hours and 20 minutes given the plot is a bit much. Considering not much really happens until the last hour it seems like a lot of filler was in there that didn't need to be. I love Kurosawa but as far as his films go I gave it an 8 because it was far too long given that in the end it wasn't a really complex plot and could've been done in much less time and still been just as good. Zodiac was a super complex plot and did it in less than 2 hours and 40, and that was the director's cut. This was about a shoe exec, a ransom, and a bit of drugs at the end, definitely no need for that length. Good but definitely not Kurosawa's best.

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Same here

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Last movie watched: High and Low (8/10)

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It also never addressed the ethical dilemma the police got themselves into. They did not arrest the kidnapper for kidnapping or for killing his two accomplices. Instead they left him free hoping to get him for attempted murder. That worked out but the overdose death of the addict/prostitute would not have happened if the police had not permitted the kidnapper to remain free.

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It also never addressed the ethical dilemma the police got themselves into. They did not arrest the kidnapper for kidnapping or for killing his two accomplices. Instead they left him free hoping to get him for attempted murder. That worked out but the overdose death of the addict/prostitute would not have happened if the police had not permitted the kidnapper to remain free.


As I understand it, the evidence they had was still circumstantial. They could not arrest Takeuchi on a haunch. They had to catch him at the scene of the crime.

This movie is fine as is. There is no need for trimming as just about every scene had its point. If anything, a lesser director would probably have added even more like Takeuchi's background through flashbacks or Chief Detective Tokura going home and constantly thinking about the case, so much so that it became an obsession. Those are the kind of things one would see in a Hollywood movie, because everything there has to come from a psychological point-of-view. Luckily for us, Kurosawa did not go that direction.

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"There is no need for trimming as just about every scene had its point"

No, you're wrong. The suspect buying heroin segment should definitely have been trimmed. There was no point to focusing that long on all the bad dancing and those zombie addicts.

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I don't agree at all; I think the length of the movie was just fine, and I have no problem with the last few scenes.

However, I do have some comments to make about one thing: the police's obsession with killing Takeuchi. I thought that put a bit of a damper on it. When they were talking about how they didn't want to arrest him just yet because they specifically wanted to seek the death penalty for him. It would be one thing if it was just that they were really outraged about Takeuchi killing those people and that they didn't want him to get away with that, i.e., they needed to delay arresting him in order to lure him to the house and put him at the scene of the crime in order so that he could meet justice for that in addition to the kidnapping. But rather, it was like they just exploited those people's deaths in order to nab Takeuchi just because they wanted to kill him. It's a matter of where the emphasis was placed.

They also seemed completely indifferent to the death of the woman Takeuchi used as a guinea pig for the heroin. Worse, they let it happen even though they had figured out right beforehand that he was going to do that. Maybe they couldn't have stopped it in time, but they didn't even try, and there was no discussion of it whatsoever, no question raised about the ethics of the way they were going about doing this. I'd go so far as to say they were complicit in that woman's death because they knew it would happen and did nothing to stop it, so obsessed were they with their goal of getting the death penalty for Takeuchi. It was as if they regarded the woman as nothing, as something expendable, just because she was a junkie. I found that disturbing.

Of course this is just a movie, but I think it says something about the society in which it was produced. Which was of course the point of the movie; dealing with social issues in Japan. The police were so concerned with defending Gondo, the businessman, and getting him back his property, but they were utterly indifferent to the junkies, who were regarded as the dregs of society. I think this is one of the aspects of the movie's theme about class antagonism, the heaven for the rich and hell for the poor. The police weren't there to protect the poor. The poor were nothing. Such is the way it's always been in capitalist society, and not just in Japan.

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