Stray Dog

The setting for this Akira Kurosawa film noir is Tokyo in the late 1940s, its streets blasted by war and its economy in collapse. When Murakami, a young detective (Toshiro Mifune, in one of his earliest roles), loses his gun to a thief, he must descend into a hell teeming with shady characters to retrieve it. Soon Murakami's pistol turns up as the weapon in the murder of a woman, leading the guilt-ridden rookie to seek help from his senior officer, Sato (Takashi Shimura). Together Murakami and Sato must hunt down the killer before he strikes again.