In Akira Kurosawa’s Nora inu (US: Stray Dog), the summer heat is so convincingly rendered that it almost becomes its own character, an oppressive force that weighs on consciences and intensifies frustrations. After his Colt revolver is stolen while riding the bus, inexperienced Detective Murakami (Toshirô Mifune) searches every corner of Tokyo to track it down, grasping at clues and interrogating contacts, which takes him through postwar slums and a crowded baseball stadium, uncovering an illegal gun running enterprise that leads to the showgirl Harumi (Keiko Awaji) who refuses to talk. Using constant wipes, interesting angular shots, and plenty of set pieces (a degraded, urban fountain where Murakami takes a nap beautifully symbolizes the anarchic wasteland that Japan had become for many), Kurosawa’s film is briskly paced, the final 15 minutes a masterpiece of climactic intrigue and action, commencing in a train station and concluding with an image of two, filthy, broken bodies lying in a field. Having starred alongside Mifune in Kurosawa’s previous film, 1948’s Drunken Angel, Takashi Shimura plays his partner Satō.