Stray Dog (1949) Akira Kurosawa

Access our blog for more: The film takes place during a heatwave in the middle of summer in postwar Tokyo. Murakami (Toshiro Mifune), a newlypromoted homicide detective in the Tokyo police, has his Colt pistol stolen while riding on a crowded trolley. He chases the pickpocket, but loses him. A remorseful Murakami reports the theft to his superior, Nakajima, at police headquarters. After Nakajima encourages him to conduct an investigation into the theft, the inexperienced Murakami gets a lead from one of the ladies who traveled in the trolley and goes undercover in the city s backstreets for days, trying to infiltrate the illicit arms market. He eventually locates a dealer who agrees to sell him a stolen gun, but when Murakami arrests the dealer s girlfriend at the exchange, he is distraught to find that she doesn t know anything about his missing gun.