It was written by Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijiro Hisaita, and Ryūzō Kikushima as a loose adaptation of the 1959 novel King's Ransom by Evan Hunter.

He plans a leveraged buyout of the company with his life savings, when kidnappers led by Ginjirо̄ Takeuchi (Yamazaki) mistakenly kidnap his chauffeur's son to ransom him for 30 million yen.

The film has been regarded as embodying the post-World War II Japanese economic miracle prior to the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, particularly in its highlighted use of the Kodama express train.

Gondo believes that the long-term future of the company will be best served by well-made shoes with modern styling, though this plan is unpopular because it means lower profits in the short term.

After a long night of contemplation Gondo announces that he will not pay the ransom, explaining that doing so would not only mean the loss of his position in the company, but cause him to go into debt and throw the futures of his wife and son into jeopardy.

The police lay a trap by first planting a false story in the newspapers implying that the accomplices are still alive, and then forging a note from them demanding more drugs.

The kidnapper is then apprehended in the act of trying to supply another lethal dose of uncut heroin to his accomplices, after testing the strength on a drug addict who overdoses and dies.

[1] The film foregrounds the modern infrastructure of the economic miracle years and the run-up to the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, including rapid rail lines and the proliferation of personal automobiles.

[4] Based on Evan Hunter's novel King's Ransom (1959), Toho Studios purchased the rights to produce the film version of the book in the summer of 1961 for $5,000 ($52,611 in 2024).

During a conversation scene between actors Isao Kimura and Takeshi Kato, Kurosawa dyed the nearby river with black paint and poured dirt into it to make the environment filthier.

[30] When the police are in pursuit of the kidnapper, the Neapolitan song 'O sole mio is played,[31] but the relative lack of music was intentional during the climactic scenes of his films so as not to disrupt their meaningful moments.

[29] In his analysis of intertextuality, scholar and acquaintance of Kurosawa Donald Richie notes the oppositional extremity of High and Low's Japanese title, Tengoku to Jigoku—which translates to Heaven and Hell—and underlines that by comparing Yokohama to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.

Stuart Galbraith IV also compares High and Low to the Divine Comedy, noting also that while Gondo's house looks down on the people below, Kurosawa conducts a 'hell' in Yokohama "that is, in part at least, seductive.

The narrative bifurcation that occurs between the wealthy Gondo's home and the geographical shift down the hill into the shanty town below it during the second half structures Kurosawa's framing of characters' decisions and moral perspectives.

[39] He comments that despite the usual association of Kurosawa's films with a humanistic sentiment, High and Low does not "question the desirability of the death penalty as punishment.

"[40] In addition he describes "the specter of miscegenation" that is evoked in the nightclub scene, broaching a "taboo topic in 1960s Japan" while subtly placing foreign influence under suspicion by linking it to criminality.

[41] Film scholar James Goodwin views the narrative's investigative structure to be an interrogation of social divisions and the nature of power on the human spirit.

He compares the third act's showdown in the unrecovered slum with the sump in Drunken Angel (1948) and the bombed out factories in The Bad Sleep Well (1960) as functional representations in the environment of the social harm of executive power.

[42] Similarly, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto views this sense of bifurcated identity to present the film as an embodiment of urban anxiety during Japan's post-World War II recovery.

While he was initially interested, by the release of High and Low, the Olympics were just a year and a half away, and the budget his staff submitted to the Organising Committee and Toho was considered excessive.

[49][50] In January and February 2023 the BFI ran a Kurosawa Season hosted by Asif Kapadia, Sonali Joshi, and Ian Haydn Smith.

A Blu-ray version was released on 26 July 2011; included are interviews with Tsutomu Yamazaki and Toshiro Mifune, an audio commentary by Stephen Prince, and a 37-minute documentary detailing the film's production.

[59] The critical and commercial success of Kurosawa's films during the 1960s prompted 20th Century Fox to approach him with an offer to direct the Japanese half of Tora!

[61] High and Low was re-released in the United States in 2002 as part of the "Kurosawa & Mifune" film festival; a multi-title release that in total accrued $561,692.

[65] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic questioned why Kurosawa made the film, but said he did not want to discourage people from seeing it, as "two hours and twenty three minutes of fine entertainment are not a commonplace achievement."

[68] The Los Angeles Times considered it a structural departure from Kurosawa's earlier films, celebrating High and Low's camera work and social perspective.

[76] Prior to the 1986 American re-release of High and Low, Paul Attanasio, writing in The Washington Post, favourably compared the film's plot and symbolism with William Shakespeare's plays.

[77] David Parkinson, writing for Empire in 2006, gave it four out of five stars, commenting on the film's use of "deceptive appearance" to illustrate that "all men are essentially equal and the only thing that really separates them are the choices they make in the depths of a crisis.

[92][93][69] High and Low has been viewed as influential on the genre of police procedurals, including Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder (2003) and David Fincher's Zodiac (2007).

[95] American director and actor Chris Weitz named High and Low his favourite Kurosawa film, stating that he's "drawn a lot from [it]".