High and Low: dir Akira Kurosawa (1963)

Classic Kurosawa, a gripping police thriller (based on an Ed McBain story) starring the ineffable Toshiro Mifune. Kidnapping goes wrong, moral dilemmas ensue, and Kurosawa uses the film noir to anatomise the inequalities in modern Japanese society. “Kurosawa’s virtuoso direction provides no easy answers,” as the blurb puts it, “and in short, intense sequences he portrays the businessman, the police and the criminal as equally brutal but nonetheless human.” In Japanese with English subtitles.