Stray Dog

NEW PRINT! Coming March 28
ESSENTIAL CINEMA
at Amherst Cinema
Sunday, March 28   2:00pm
Wednesday, March 31   7:00pm

In his third film with Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune plays young police detective Murakami. One summer day on a crowded bus in Tokyo, his gun is stolen by a pickpocket. Rather than face the shame of reporting his gun missing, he chooses to go out and find it himself (there were not many weapons on the streets of Tokyo immediately following WWII). While trying to locate the gun, he discovers an entire criminal underworld. He is eventually helped on his journey by superior officer Sato (Takashi Shimura), who seems to suggest that the young detective is indulging in his own criminal desires. The search becomes even more desperate when Murakami finds out that his gun has been used in several crimes, including murder. He then develops an obsession with finding both the gun and the killer.

Director Akira Kurosawa | 1949 | 122 mins | In Japanese with subtitles