A young executive hunts down his father’s killer in director Akira Kurosawa’s scathing The Bad Sleep Well. Continuing his legendary collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa combines elements of Hamlet and American film noir to chilling effect in exposing the corrupt boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan. —The Criterion Collection
The son of an army officer, Kurosawa studied art before gravitating to film as a means of supporting himself. He served seven years as an assistant to director Kajiro Yamamoto before he began his own directorial career with Sanshiro Sugata (1943), a film about the 19th century struggle for supremacy between adherents of judo and jujitsu that so impressed the military government, he was prevailed upon to make a sequel (Sanshiro Sugata Part Two). Following the end of World War II, Kurosawa’s career gathered speed with a series of films that cut across all genres, from crime thrillers to period dramas. Among the latter, his Rashomon (1951) became the first postwar Japanese film to find wide favor with Western audiences. It was Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954), however, that made the largest impact of any of his movies outside of Japan. Although heavily cut for its original release, this three-hour-plus medieval action drama, shot with painstaking… read more
Seething portrait of corporate Japan through the lens of a kind of Shakespearean Noir where men must witness their own funerals. Six Stars!
"How can you be so ruthless?" Amazing how Kurosawa can expertly incorporate new styles and not miss a beat. This is a political film but doesn't rub it in your face. Shakespeareian in it's dramatic scope, as are many of the scene stagings. Perhaps the most complex Kurosawa story I have seen to date. I love how you can't tell who's evil until about midway through: the corporate villain or the vengeful newlywed...
Fantastic thriller, I like how Kurosawa starts incorporating different genre styles as the movie goes along, because it's clear that it never stays in one track, so the plot keeps throwing you off-guard until you reach that fantastic ending, which by the way wouldn't have been the same without the proper buildup.
Quite possibly Kurosawa's best non-samurai picture -- compelling, calculated, and acted to a tee.
Beginning their third and final decade as star and director, Toshiro Mifune once again headlines a stunning morality tale for Akira Kurosawa, utilizing elements of “Hamlet” to tell the story of a young… read review