The Bad Sleep Well Details

In this drama about corporate corruption in postwar Japan, Toshiro Mifune lays down his samurai sword to play a housing company employee who marries the boss's daughter purely to expose his new father-in-law, whom he believes was responsible for his own father's “suicide”. Akira Kurosawa turns what should have been a taut thriller into a rather sombre exercise in morality, with Shakespearean themes of revenge and remorse. The film flopped in Japan (critiques of the economic recovery were rare) and led to the eventual collapse of the director's production company.

Moody thriller, in the style of American gangster movies of the 40s, but with an ending that Hollywood would have rejected as too downbeat.