Manhunt

A hard nosed prosecutor is accused of theft. The accusation is fabricated and he goes on the run to clear his name, helped along the way by the daughter of a rich man. Junya Satō's film is adapted from Juko Nishimura's novel, and in Japan it got poor reviews and failed at the box office. What happened next was something else: it became the first foreign film released in China after the Cultural Revolution, where it is estimated to have sold somewhere between three hundred and eight hundred million tickets. Ken Takakura entered the memory of a whole Chinese generation through it. John Woo remade it in 2017.