The Bad Sleep Well

The Bad Sleep Well (Japanese: 悪い奴ほどよく眠る, Hepburn: Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru; lit. 'The worse they are, the better they sleep') is a 1960 Japanese neo-noir crime mystery film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It was the first film to be produced under Kurosawa's own independent production company. It was entered into the 11th Berlin International Film Festival. The film stars Toshiro Mifune as a young man who gets a prominent position in a corrupt postwar Japanese company to expose the men responsible for his father's death. It draws upon Shakespeare's Hamlet, while doubling as a critique of corporate corruption. It is one of four films, along with Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949) and High and Low (1963), in which Kurosawa explores the film noir genre. Like Kurosawa's next two movies with Mifune, Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962), Mifune's character is "a lone hero fighting against overwhelming odds and corrupt authorities."