Stray Dog Analysis

Stray Dog (1949)

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa

It's a detective thriller - it is a considered to be a start for the buddy cop genre. This film's writing and the form feel contemporary. When a detective loses his gun - he gets another detective's help to solve a case, where they doubt that his gun would've been used. The film reminded me of Mysskin's Thupparivaalan where the film starts with a small mystery and as the detectives go to solve it, they go deeper into the case and dig out bigger crimes. Here they use the gun being lost, and the same gun being used in other crimes to explore guilt in the protagonist - this brings in scope for more urgency and drama.

The dialogue is written so well, especially the conversations between the detectives - the ending scene kind of reiterates the character arc of Murakami - loss of innocence. The scene in the ending where Murakami is figuring out who the bad guy is, among people - it's written and edited in a fluid way - with the voice over, and the shots going one by one almost like a match cut. This film has a good sense of visual language, they use close ups sparingly - they're used only when they want to emphasize on something and when the mood of the scene is light, they use a mid or a long shot and capture the entire space.