Darren Carver-Balsiger’s review published on Letterboxd:
Stray Dog is a thrilling genre piece, an expert crime movie perfectly executed and exemplary for the place and time it was made. Akira Kurosawa's skill at bringing Western genres and narratives to Japan is so well regarded that his films in turn inspired the West. Stray Dog is a pulpy detective film, reminiscent of pre-war Hollywood fare. Yet Stray Dog elevates the genre, only to be elevated further fifteen years later with Kurosawa's High and Low. Stray Dog did not have an initial impact on world cinema, but it's worth remembering that Rashomon was the first Asian film to become known in the West and that wasn't released until a year later. However, one of Rashomon's most acclaimed innovations are the shots pointed directly at the sun. But here's what's interesting: Kurosawa pulled that same trick earlier, here, in Stray Dog. History revolves around Western arrogance, but that doesn't make it true.
Stray Dog is a precursor to what we might consider buddy cop movies. Toshiro Mifune plays the principled, naïve rookie paired with Takashi Shimura's relaxed, rule-bending veteran. These tropes will become the norm of a future subgenre, but here they are timeless. Even thematically, as the film explores a criminal underworld, the film becomes retroactively welltrodden. The idea of a cop and a criminal sharing similarities is bold here, yet has obviously been done to death as time has passed. After a final showdown that is so poetic in its tension Stray Dog lingers on a hero and villain, laying on the ground, catching their breath, equals in a sense.
Stray Dog attempts to capture the mood of post-war Japan. Poverty, rationing, and returning men are all a part of this film. The influence of America lingers through cabaret, baseball, and signs in English. Women wear dresses, not kimonos. This is a time of change, as the young think the world is bitter, and both cop and criminal agree. The elders have led the world astray and are to be ignored. This was the society Japan was building in the late 1940s, as all the broken men had to be dealt with. Some are criminals, some are policemen, but they're moulded from the same conflict. Perhaps that is why Mifune's character feels guilty that his gun is used in crimes by someone bad yet similar to himself. Perhaps Japan was feeling guilty for what happened in the war. In the late 1940s, reflection was required (and is a recurring theme of Kurosawa late 40s output). There is some irony though, as Japan now ignores its history after many generations, which makes the introspection during the immediate aftermath of World War Two all the more curious.
Stray Dog is thrilling and tense, a wild ride of a film. It drips and sweats under Kurosawa's use of weather and a heatwave setting, all to make this layered in a clammy, claustrophobic world of crime. Stray Dog depicts a country of broken people, and uses that to tell a story which is incredibly engrossing and bitterly thoughtful.
