source Wiki 720p; English soft subs from online. thanks to who made and timed them. (note - about a minute of dialogue is missing at 73 minute mark from subs. not a big gap). Detectives investigate the murder of an old man found in a Tokyo rail yard. The biggest box office hit director Yoshitaro Nomura ever had in his native Japan was Castle of Sand (1974), one of eight films he made based on the work of crime novelist Seicho Matsumoto. It was the most highly-regarded of Nomura's films by Japanese critics, took second place in Kinema Jumpo magazine's 1975's poll of critics, and was ranked 27th in the magazine's list of best films of the 20th century. Nomura's work was little-seen in the west until recently, and even today western audiences may find the ambitious Castle of Sand disconcerting for the very reasons that Japanese critics applauded it at the time it was made: the meticulous detailing of the investigative procedure; the final twenty minutes, which intercuts a police meeting describing the findings with a musical performance and the story's tragic denouement; and the mixing of film noir, melodrama, opulent color and visual grandeur. This is filmmaking on a grand scale, filmmaking that takes risks. And if your jaw is hanging open at the end of Castle of Sand, it may well be because that his audacious risk-taking pays off.