Stray Dog

During an unrelenting heatwave in post-WWII Tokyo, newly promoted detective Murakami teams up with a grizzled old-timer to track down his stolen gun and the criminal who has been putting it to deadly use all over town. Often described as the progenitor of the buddy cop movie, Stray Dog also goes far beyond the genre it helped create, an oddly ruminative thriller that effortlessly weaves documentary footage of Tokyo into the crime genre conventions and intense action sequences. We are shown a ravaged city holding its breath after the war, unsure of what happens next. The heat, the city, the sweat on Murakami’s brow as the line between hero and criminal blurs the longer he investigates - these give a tangible form to the unspeakable trauma of that time. Sometimes overshadowed by Kurosawa’s more famous works, Stray Dog is a quiet—and disquieting— cinematic gem.