Stray Dog Meditates On Morality With Great Performances and Exceptional Blocking

Akira Kurosawa is handily one of my favorite filmmakers of all-time. Not exactly the most original sentiment, I agree, but gosh, I just love his movies to pieces. In particular, I love the blocking in his films, the arrangement of characters in a given shot, not to mention their body language, can be immediate visual indicators of who these characters are as people. Take a shot (pictured below) from Stray Dog, for instance, that films three characters in an interrogation room head-on. The woman being interrogated is closest to the camera and clearly evokes a sense of assured confidence that she can get out of this situation, while in the far back is the films protagonist, Detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune), all buttoned up, nervous and kept at a distance from someone he wants answers from.

A brilliant example of subtly illuminating blocking from Stray Dog.

In between, them is Detective Sato (Takashi Shimura), whose calm as a cucumber and exudes a sense of authority as he clearly watches both Murakami and the suspect being interrogated. Stray Dog never calls attention to the arrangement of these characters, its focus consistently remains on suspense and the dialogue. But in just this one shot, a viewer could walk into this movie totally unaware of what it's about and clearly tell who's in charge, what's at stake and the personality of individual characters. It's the kind of masterful blocking found throughout Akira Kurosawa's filmography which includes the exceedingly engrossing 1949 crime thriller Stray Dog.

Detective Murakami is a fresh face on the Tokyo detective force and he's looking to leave a good impression on this job. That mission becomes complicated once a citizen takes his gun. Distraught over this development, Murakami is determined to get the gun back. Eventually, he has to team up with the far more experienced Detective Sato to retrieve his weapon, which they eventually learn has fallen into the hands of a local criminal who is now using Murakami's gun to commit violent crimes. As the young detective's guilt over losing his weapon grows, so does the importance of retrieving this deadly weapon.

Much like with the characters in his 1948 directorial effort Drunken Angel, Akira Kurosawa uses the characters of Stray Dog as avatars to explore various post-World War II perspectives of Japanese citizens. Specifically, it's eventually revealed that both Murakami and the man who is now in possession of his gun are both World War II veterans who experienced hardship both during the war and even after it was over in the form of people taking their knapsacks. They've both been scarred by the horrors of the world and the selfishness of the people inhabiting. Murakami has responded to all of this turmoil by trying to bring order to society and by looking for the good in people while the criminal he's facing off against has taken a more self-centered and pessimistic outlook.

A similar level of contrasts in character beliefs exists between Murakami and his detective partner Sato, with the latter character not even seeing the criminals he helps bring to justice as people anymore. Though the film, like the ending of Drunken Angel, comes down to siding with the more optimistic perspective, it doesn't shy away from depicting the brutal nature of the grimmest parts of reality. Meanwhile, harsher outlooks on the world are treated with empathy rather than callousness. Why else would one of the final scenes of Stray Dog linger on the villain tragically wailing in pain, an unflinching look at the humanity of a criminal Sato denies even existing? In Stray Dog, characters are frequently defined by their moral outlook on a world far bigger than themselves and however that moral outlook manifests, it treats it with welcome depth and humanity.

Beyond functioning as a contemplation of varying forms of moral outlooks in the wake of World War II, Stray Dog also functions brilliantly as a compulsively riveting crime thriller. Both Kurosawa's direction and the editing help to lend a sense of agonizingly visceral tension to scenes like Murakami and Sato trying to find a suspect in a crowded baseball game or Murakami quietly trying to use only a handful of visual cues to catch his opponent in the waiting area of a train station. In both sequences, Murakami and/or Sato have to keep their desire to nab their adversaries subdued so they don't give away the game. But the filmmaking of Stray Dog ensures that the importance of these moments to these characters comes through in just how engrossing and suspenseful they are to watch.

Headlining this feature are two of Kurosawa's go-to actors getting to inhabit roles that are delightfully different from the standard parts they're associated with. Toshiro Mifune, known for his brash performances in the likes of Rashomon or Seven Samurai, gets to go in the complete opposite direction for the nervous and soft-spoken role of Murakami. It may be different from some of his other performances but it's a role Mifune pulls off with flying colors. Meanwhile, Takashi Shimura, best known for his beautiful restrained lead role in Ikiru, plays an experienced confident Humphery Bogart type in a role he portrays effortlessly, Shimura is a delight in this part. Whether it's in its thoughtful contemplations of morality, it's blocking or it's lead performances, Stray Dog will constantly surprise even the most ardent Akira Kurosawa aficionado in just how well-done it is!