High and Low

Kingo Gondo, the factory manager at National Shoes, which is known for manufacturing durable but plain footwear, lives with his wife Reiko and their adolescent son Jun in a lavish house atop a hill overlooking the city of Yokohama. At 13%, he is also one of the company's largest shareholders, he able to acquire those shares because of Reiko's family's wealth. There is a power struggle going on within the company with some of the smaller executive shareholders wanting him to join forces with them in a coup over who they call disrespectfully "The Old Man", the company CEO, they wanting to move the company into manufacturing stylish but disposable footwear. In dismissing those executives in not wanting to go the disposable route, Gondo does not tell them or Kawanishi, his faithful assistant of ten years, that he plans his own coup in borrowing heavily to acquire enough shares to take over the company to move into the production of still durable yet modernly styled footwear. Just as he is about to purchase those shares to enact his plan, someone within his sphere of existence is kidnapped, the unknown kidnapper's ransom demand from him being an exorbitant sum in return for not killing the kidnap victim, and for him not to involve the police. The ransom sum would take up the entire amount that he has just borrowed, he paying it which would ruin him financially and not allow him to carry out his plan for the company. As the evidence points to the kidnapper having a personal agenda beyond just extortion, the executives who Gondo dismissed are among the suspects. As the process progresses, which eventually does include the police led by Inspector Tokura, Gondo may see his financial fortunes and his morals ebb and flow along with it.