Stakeout is a slow-paced film. Some may find it boring. Others may dismiss it as not noir. Mirroring the patience required of the featured police investigators during a week-long stakeout, the film is built on slow-boil tension and methodical detection, not twists and thrills. After the film opens with an extended pre-credits train ride out of Tokyo in the middle of an oppressively hot and humid summer, two undercover police detectives arrive in the smallish city of Saga where they set up shop in a small inn overlooking the residence of interest. We soon learn that the two detectives, young Takao Yuki (Minoru Ôki) and more seasoned Yuji Shimooka (Seiji Miyaguchi), are hunting a fugitive murderer (Takahiro Tamura), hoping he’ll seek succor from his ex-girlfriend Sadako Yokokawa (Hideko Takamine), now married and keeping house for a distant, older husband and his stepchildren in a modest home across the street from the inn. It’s a long shot, and Yoshitarô Nomura’s unhurried direction reinforces that. Only in the second half (the second of two full hours), just as Yuki and Shimooka consider giving up and returning to Tokyo, does the subject’s behavior take a slightly suspicious turn, a mysterious detour from her humdrum daily routine renewing hope in the officers. Nomura and crew incorporate a handful of innovative camera angles (note the impressive crane shot up the police station’s exterior and into a bustling second-floor office) and deftly foreground the beauty of the mountainous countryside in the third act. It’s a finely crafted film that exhibits restraint all the way to the end, so don’t expect an explosive ending.